Visual-inertial positional awareness for autonomous and non-autonomous device

ABSTRACT

The described positional awareness techniques employing visual-inertial sensory data gathering and analysis hardware with reference to specific example implementations implement improvements in the use of sensors, techniques and hardware design that can enable specific embodiments to provide positional awareness to machines with improved speed and accuracy.

PRIORITY APPLICATION STATEMENT

This application is a Continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 15/925,289, filed Mar. 19, 2018, entitled “VISUAL-INERTIAL POSITIONAL AWARENESS FOR AUTONOMOUS AND NON-AUTONOMOUS DEVICE” (PERC 1010-1), which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 15/250,419, filed Aug. 29, 2016 entitled “VISUAL-INERTIAL POSITIONAL AWARENESS FOR AUTONOMOUS AND NON-AUTONOMOUS DEVICE” (PERC 1000-1). The non-provisional application is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.

FIELD OF THE TECHNOLOGY DISCLOSED

The technology disclosed generally relates to detecting location and positioning of a mobile device, and more particularly relates to application of visual processing and inertial sensor data to positioning and guidance technologies.

BACKGROUND

The subject matter discussed in this section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in this section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in this section or associated with the subject matter provided as background should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in this section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves can also correspond to implementations of the claimed technology.

Autonomous robots have long been the stuff of science fiction fantasy. One technical challenge in realizing the truly autonomous robot is the need for the robot to be able to identify where they are, where they have been and plan where they are going. Traditional SLAM techniques have improved greatly in recent years, however, there remains considerable technical challenge to providing fast accurate and reliable positional awareness to robots and self-guiding mobile platforms.

With the recent proliferation of virtual reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift™, PlayStation™ VR, Samsung Gear™ VR, the HTC Vive™ and others, a new class of devices—one that is not autonomous but rather worn by a human user—that would benefit from fast, accurate and reliable positional information has arisen. Many technical challenges remain however in the field of enabling machines and devices to identify where they are, where they have been and plan where they are going. On especially challenging area involves recognizing a location and obstructions accurately and quickly. A variety of different approaches have been tried. For example RFID/WiFi approaches have proven to be expensive and of limited accuracy. Depth sensor based approaches have been found to be high cost and suffer from power drain and interference issues. Marker based approaches require markers placed within the work area—limiting the useful area in which the device can operate. Visual approaches currently are slow leading to failure when used in fast motion applications. Such approaches can also suffer scale ambiguity. Yet these implementations failed to live up to the standards required for widespread adoption.

The challenge of providing fast reliable affordable positional awareness to devices heretofore remained largely unsolved.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the drawings, like reference characters generally refer to like parts throughout the different views. Also, the drawings are not necessarily to scale, with an emphasis instead generally being placed upon illustrating the principles of the technology disclosed. In the following description, various implementations of the technology disclosed are described with reference to the following drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a visual-inertial sensor.

FIG. 2 illustrates an example of imaging configuration in which techniques described herein can be embodied.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a visual-inertial sensory system.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example tracking system implementing the tracking process.

FIG. 5A illustrates an example relocalization process for a tracking system implementing the tracking process.

FIG. 5B illustrates an example of a relocalization search strategy selection process in one implementation.

FIG. 6 illustrates an example of an occupancy grid map in one implementation.

FIG. 7 illustrates an example of reprojection error.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example robot guidance application in which one implementation can be embodied.

FIG. 9 illustrates an example VR application in which one implementation can be embodied.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example AR application in which one implementation can be embodied.

FIG. 11 is a representative method of guiding a mobile device using information from a camera with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU).

FIG. 12 is a representative method of updating a position of a mobile unit that includes a camera with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU).

FIG. 13 is a representative method of using a hybrid point grid to guide a mobile device that includes a camera with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU).

FIG. 14 illustrates an example of a control unit for a multi-ocular-auxiliary sensor.

FIG. 15 illustrates an example of a multi-ocular controller in FIG. 14.

FIG. 16 illustrates an example of an imaging component in FIG. 14.

FIG. 17 illustrates a method of operation of the feature buffer in FIG. 14.

FIG. 18 illustrates an example of an inertial component in FIG. 14.

FIG. 19 illustrates an example of an odometry component in FIG. 14.

FIG. 20 illustrates an example of a geolocation component in FIG. 14.

FIG. 21 illustrates an example of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor where an inertial measurement unit and a wheel odometry unit are used as auxiliary sensors.

FIG. 22 illustrates an example of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor where an inertial measurement unit and a global positioning system are used as auxiliary sensors.

FIG. 23 illustrates an example of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor where an inertial measurement unit, a wheel odometry unit and a global positioning system receiver are used as auxiliary sensors.

FIG. 24 illustrates an example of a quadocular-auxiliary sensory system.

FIG. 25 illustrates an example tracking system implementing the tracking process.

FIG. 26 is a representative method of updating a position of an autonomous mobile unit that includes cameras, a multi-axis inertial measuring unit and a wheel odometry unit.

FIG. 27 is a representative method of updating a position of an autonomous mobile unit that includes cameras, a multi-axis inertial measuring unit and a global positioning system.

FIG. 28 is a representative method of updating a position of an autonomous mobile unit that includes cameras, a multi-axis inertial measuring unit, a wheel odometry unit and a global positioning system.

FIG. 29 illustrates an example of an occupancy grid map in one implementation.

FIG. 30 illustrates an example autonomous robot guidance application in which one implementation can be embodied.

FIG. 31 illustrates an example autonomous vehicle guidance application in which one implementation can be embodied.

FIG. 33 is a representative method of guiding an autonomous mobile unit using information from multiple cameras and auxiliary sensors.

FIG. 32 is a representative method of navigating an autonomous mobile unit that multiple cameras and auxiliary sensors.

DESCRIPTION

The following detailed description is made with reference to the figures. Sample implementations are described to illustrate the technology disclosed, not to limit its scope, which is defined by the claims. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize a variety of equivalent variations on the description that follows.

This document describes positional awareness techniques employing visual-inertial sensory data gathering and analysis hardware with reference to specific example implementations. The discussion is organized as follows. First, an introduction describing some of the problems addressed by various implementations will be presented. Then, a high-level description of one implementation will be discussed at an architectural level. Next, the processes used by some implementations to efficiently process image and inertial data are discussed. Lastly, the technology disclosed will be illustrated with reference to particular applications of (i) Robots and self-guided autonomous platforms, (ii) virtual reality headsets and wearable devices, and (iii) augmented reality headsets and wearable devices. The references to specific examples are intended to be illustrative of the approaches disclosed herein rather than limiting.

Improvements in the use of sensors, techniques and hardware design can enable specific implementations to provide improved speed and accuracy, however, such improvements come with an increased number of parameters and significant memory and computational requirements. Conventional approaches to automatic guidance have largely focused on single sensor input. Camera based approaches have been relatively accurate, but suffer speed limitations (most hardware provide 30 fps, 60 fps at most), and are computationally expensive since these approaches process every pixel. Inertial guidance based approaches suffer from drift of the zero or origin point. Further, these approaches require expensive hardware in order to achieve useful results. WIFI and RFID approaches based on older technology exist, however, these have shown themselves to be limited in capability. Depth sensor based approaches are expensive. Further, these approaches require active sensing, so the computational cost is relatively high. Finally, the device's active sensing can pose interference issues.

To overcome the computational burden of processing large amounts of image data all the time, inertial data can be used to estimate changes in the environment due to changes in pose of the machine under guidance. To overcome the drift problems associated with inertial sensors, images can be captured and processed to correct and update pose estimates made based upon inertial data. Further, stereo imaging sensors comprised of RGB and grayscale camera combinations can provide stereo imaging capabilities, at lower cost points than stereo RGB systems. Yet further, using low-end sensors to construct a sensor, e.g., cameras having resolution of 640×480, obviates the cost of high-end image sensors. Still further, use of a low-power Control Unit to perform certain sensor based processing, instead of a powerful processor of a host or the machine under guidance, enables use of the system at reduced cost relative to conventional approaches. Implementations can be deployed in a variety of usage scenarios, including robot or other mobile platform guidance, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) headsets, goggles or other wearable devices, and others.

Examples of robot applications that benefit from employing positional awareness techniques such as described herein include:

-   -   Caregiver and Service robots (traveling on a ground plane)     -   A robot vacuuming/mopping/cleaning the floor.     -   A robot being commanded to carry objects around the environment.     -   A telepresence robot moving around a remote environment         automatically.     -   A robot butler that follows a person around.

In each of the scenarios listed above, the robot utilizes the techniques described herein in order to track its own location and to recognize the objects that it encounters. Also, since the robot performs many complex tasks, each with real-time constraints, it is beneficial that the sensing be done rapidly to accelerate the perception pipeline. To overcome the computational burden imposed by this processing, implementations offload some computation from the main processor to the visual-inertial sensor module. In addition, since it is a mobile robot, which carries limited battery, energy consumption is a major challenge. Accordingly, some implementations offload some computational tasks from the main processor to a low-power sensor module, thereby enabling implementations to achieve overall energy efficiency. Since cost is an issue in mobile robots, because lowering the cost of the robot makes the robot affordable to more customers, cost reduction is another factor for sensor design. Accordingly, some implementations employ one low-cost grayscale sensor that is used for localization tasks, and one colored sensor for recognition tasks. This design point enables these implementations to significantly reduce the cost over a stereo colored sensor designs without sacrificing performance.

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) scenarios require a wearable headset to track its own location, and may be to recognize the objects that it encounters. In order to track its location, the wearable headset is equipped with a positional self-aware device that senses its own movement through a stereo inertial hardware sensor. Accordingly, the sensor generates reliable inertial data so that the tracking and mapping pipeline that follows can accurately infer the device's—and hence the headset's—location.

In implementations in which the device is embedded within another device, e.g., robot, mobile platform, wearable computer, AR/VR headset, goggles, wrist or other watches, etc., limited computational resources are available, while the workload of robot guidance, or AR/VR processing demands real-time performance, sensing is done rapidly to accelerate the perception processing pipeline. Accordingly, some implementations achieve these goals by offloading some computation from the main processor to the sensor module.

In addition, in AR/VR applications the mobile embedded device carries limited battery power, making energy consumption a challenge. Accordingly, some implementations offload some computation from the main processor to the low-power sensor module, in order to achieve overall energy efficiency.

Yet further, cost is an issue in many AR/VR applications because as the cost of the device is lowered, the potential to reach more customers is expanded. Hence cost is another factor for the sensor module design. Accordingly, some implementations use one low-cost grayscale sensor for localization tasks, and one colored sensor for recognition tasks. This design can provide significantly reduced cost over a stereo colored sensor design without sacrificing performance.

Examples of systems, apparatus, and methods according to the disclosed implementations are described in a robot guidance, VR and AR wearable device contexts with image and inertial data. In other instances, the technology disclosed can be applied to autonomous vehicle guidance technology, navigation, telecommunications systems, financial systems, security trading, banking, business intelligence, marketing, mining, energy, etc. and using sonar, audio, and LIDAR data. Other services are possible, such that the following examples should not be taken as definitive or limiting either in scope, context, or setting.

The technology disclosed relates to improving utilization of computing resources such as computational power and memory use during processing of image and inertial data inside a single input-multiple data (SIMD) architecture. The technology disclosed can be implemented in the context of any computer-implemented system including an reduced instruction set (RISC) system, emulated hardware environment, or the like. Moreover, this technology can be implemented using two or more separate and distinct computer-implemented systems that cooperate and communicate with one another. This technology can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a process, a method, an apparatus, a system, a device, a computer readable medium such as a computer readable storage medium that stores computer readable instructions or computer program code, or as a computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having a computer readable program code embodied therein.

The technology disclosed can be implemented in the context of any computer-implemented system like a NEON ARM VFP9-S processor, an ARM core processor, or a compatible processor implementation.

In addition, the technology disclosed can be implemented using a variety of different imaging sensors and technologies, including RGB, grayscale, binary (e.g., digital image subjected to threshold intensity level), IR, sonar, LIDAR or combinations thereof.

System Overview

Stereo Visual-Inertial Sensor

FIG. 1 illustrates a visual-inertial sensor in block diagram format. Control Unit 100 in FIG. 1 can be coupled to an external memory 126, a flash memory (not shown by FIG. 1 for clarity sake), and one or more persistent storages such as HDDs, optical drives or the like (also not shown in FIG. 1 for clarity sake). Control Unit 100 includes a cache 122, a USB I/O port 103, a Camera Serial Interface (CSI) and an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I²C) I/O ports 104, a single instruction multiple-data (SIMD) capable processor 106 intercoupled by a local bus 108. An Imaging component 110 includes a direct memory access (DMA) 112, an image undistortion processor 114, a Shi-Tomasi processor 115, a feature undistortion processor 116, a feature description engine 117, an optical flow feature correspondence processor 118, under control of an Imaging Engine 119. In an embodiment, the external memory 126 is a 64 bit double data rate (DDR) random access memory (RAM). In an embodiment the SIMD capable processor 106 is implemented as a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture. In an embodiment, the SIMD capable processor 106 is implemented as a NEON ARM VFP9-S.

The Inertial component 120 includes an Inertial Measurement engine 105 that implements a time stamping processor 107 that time stamps sets of inertial data from an inertial sensor (not shown in FIG. 1 for clarity sake), a bias correction processor 109 that corrects data readout from the timestamped inertial data, a scale correction processor 111 that applies stored scale factor information to the corrected inertial data, a mis-alignment correction processor 113 that corrects misalignments of sensory elements of the inertial measurement sensor, and an IMU-Image coordinate transformation processor 115 that computes transformations describing differences between a frame of reference of the inertial data and a frame of reference of the image data.

Visual-Inertial Sensor

FIG. 2 illustrates an example visual-inertial sensor implementation configured for determining positional information. Visual-inertial sensor 200 includes a grayscale camera 208, a colored camera 210, an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) 202, and a Computation Unit (CU) 100, having a USB interface to provide output to a host. Cameras 208, 210 include at least partially overlapping fields of view to provide a stereoscopic capable portion 214 within an effective range of depth of view of the visual-inertial sensor 200. Using cameras 208, 210, enables visual-inertial sensor 200 to generate image depth information, which is useful for agent localization tasks (including tracking, localization, map generation, and relocalization). In a representative implementation illustrated by FIG. 2, camera 208 is a grayscale camera used mainly for agent localization that extracts features from images and camera 210 is a colored camera that provides a plurality of functions: firstly, to extract features from images in agent localization (similar to the usage of grayscale camera), and secondly, to provide raw information for deep learning based tasks, including object recognition, object tracking, image captioning, and the like.

An IMU 202 provides raw sensor data for agent localization pipeline, which consumes IMU data at a high frequency (>200 Hz) to generate agent positional information in real-time. In an implementation, the localization pipeline combines information from IMU 202 which runs at relatively high frequency to provide frequent updates of less accurate information, and cameras 208, 210, which run at relatively lower frequency, 30 Hz, to provide more accurate information with less frequency.

The Control Unit 100 performs control of the sensors, IMU 202 and Cameras 208, 210, time stamping sensor data from the sensors, performs pre-computation in order to accelerate the localization pipeline, and packages raw data for sending over USB 103 to a host.

The USB interface 103 enables the visual-inertial sensor 200 to interact with a host. The host (not shown in FIG. 2 for clarity sake) can be a mobile device or a desktop/laptop computer, specialized machine controller, automobile control module, robot controller or the like, that consumes the data generated by the visual-inertial sensor 200. In various implementations, the host can perform additional computation to achieve agent localization and deep learning tasks. Implementations that perform data pre-processing on low-power CU 100 relieve the host processor (which has a much higher power consumption compared to low-power CU) from performing these tasks. As a result, such implementations achieve increased energy efficiency.

Note that one implementation averages the aligned images. In other implementations, other techniques are used. Also note that in another implementation an image quality measurement sub-step is included. So if the output image is too dark or still not sharp or clear enough, the image will be rejected and not passed to the rest of the pipeline.

Sensor Data Generation and Processing

In an embodiment, IMU raw data is corrected on the CU 100, thereby enabling implementations that do not require extra processing from the host processor, therefore accelerating the sensor pre-processing pipeline.

Time Stamping:

The time stamping processor 107 time stamps each set of inertial measurement data that the control unit 100 receives from the IMU sensor 202 data, in order to assure that the visual-inertial sensor 200 maintains a temporally accurate stream of sensor data. Such rigorous attention to maintaining the integrity of the sensor data stream enables implementations to provide agent localization that works reliably. Time-stamping raw data by the visual-inertial sensor obviates the need for complex synchronization tasks.

Bias Correction:

The bias correction processor 109 corrects IMU data readout from the timestamped inertial data. Due to manufacturing imperfections, IMU sensors usually have bias problems such that its measurements contain errors. A bias error, if not removed from the measurement, is integrated twice as part of the mechanization process. In this case, a constant bias (error) in acceleration becomes a linear error in velocity and a quadratic error in position. A constant bias in attitude rate (gyro) becomes a quadratic error in velocity and a cubic error in position. The bias can be derived from the offline factory sensor calibration stage. This calibration information in CU 100 to perform bias correction task on CU 100.

Scale Correction:

The scale correction processor 111 applies stored scale factor information to the corrected inertial data. Scale factor error is the relation between input and output. If the input is 100%, the expected output is 100%. The actual output is the result of a linear effect, where the output is proportional to the input but scaled. For example, if the input is 10 m/s2, but there is a 2% scale factor error, the output measurement is 10.2 m/s2. The scale factor can be derived from the offline factory sensor calibration stage. This calibration information in CU 100 to perform scale correction task on CU 100.

Misalignment Correction:

The mis-alignment correction processor 113 corrects misalignments of sensory elements of the inertial measurement sensor. There are three gyroscopes and three accelerometers are mounted orthogonal to each other. The mountings, however, have errors and so are not perfectly 90 degrees. This leads to a correlation between sensors. For example, assume one axis is pointed perfectly up and the IMU is level. The accelerometer on this axis is measuring gravity. If the other two axes were perfectly orthogonal, they do not measure any of the effect of gravity. If there is a non-orthogonality, the other axes also measure gravity, leading to a correlation in the measurements. The effect of non-orthogonality occurs within sensor sets (between accelerometers or gyroscopes), between sensor sets or between the sensor sets and the enclosure (package misalignment). Careful manufacturing, as well as factory calibration, can help minimize this error source. Continuous estimation and correction during system operation is also an approach used to minimize this effect. Package misalignment (between the IMU 202 and the enclosure) can be removed by performing a bore-sighting estimation to determine the offset between the IMU 202 measurement frame and the sensor (objective) frame. The misalignment numbers can be derived from the offline factory sensor calibration stage. This calibration information in CU 100 to perform misalignment correction task on CU 100.

Sensor Visual Data Generation and Processing

Image Undistortion:

The image undistortion processor 114 corrects distortion in the image data in the captured frames. The image distortion is generally referred to an optical aberration that deforms and bends physically straight lines and makes them appear curvy in images. Optical distortion occurs as a result of optical design. In order to achieve reliable computer vision results, image undistortion processor 114 can un-distort the image before further processing is performed. This can be achieved by using a lookup table of the size of the input image, and performing a remapping operation to undistort the whole image.

Feature Undistortion:

In cases when the remaining portions of the processing pipeline do not require the whole image, but only the feature points within the image, the feature undistortion processor 116 perform a feature undistortion operation on the CU. In detail, this operation runs after the feature extraction stage, and undistorts each feature point.

Feature Detection:

The Shi-Tomasi processor 115 performs feature detection upon image frames. Features are “interesting” parts of an image. The Shi-Tomasi feature detection includes methods that aim at computing abstractions of image information and making local decisions at every image point whether there is an image feature of a given type at that point or not. The resulting features will be subsets of the image domain, often in the form of isolated points. Some implementations perform the feature detection on the CU 100 to relieve the host from performing such tasks, and to accelerate the feature detection process. Accordingly, in an implementation, processing includes:

-   -   Action 1: calculate eigen value for each pixel and determine (i)         whether the feature is of interest; and (ii) for features of         interest, a type of feature:         -   two small eigen values: feature is not interesting         -   one small, one big value: feature is likely an edge         -   two big values: feature is likely a corner         -   other type of features     -   Action 2: refine         -   Apply non-maximum suppression         -   Apply spatial binning         -   Apply heuristics         -   Apply other types of refinement

Feature Description:

The feature description engine 117 performs feature description on detected features. The feature description includes methods to uniquely identify each detected points in an image. Feature description can be used to compare and match feature points between different images. Some implementations perform the feature description on the CU 100 to relieve the host from performing such tasks, and to accelerate the feature description process.

One implementation of feature description engine 117 uses a SIMD-accelerated ORB descriptor to describe features. The description of a feature can be used for matching purposes and describing a feature's uniqueness. The ORB descriptor approach was selected for its relative rotational invariance and immunity to Gaussian image noise. One example of an ORB feature detector and binary descriptor can be found at “ORB feature detector and binary descriptor”, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes. For further information on ORB Descriptor, reference may be had to Ethan Rublee, et al., “ORB: an efficient alternative to SIFT or SURF”, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.

2D Feature Correspondence Generation:

The optical flow feature correspondence processor 118 performs 2D feature correspondence generation for the features. The feature correspondence computation is used to identify the feature points that appear in both the left and the right cameras. Once feature correspondence is identified for any two feature points, triangulation can be applied to the feature points to derive the depth of the point in space. This depth information is employed by processes later in the localization pipeline. Some implementations perform the feature correspondence generation on the CU 100 to relieve the host from performing such tasks, and to accelerate the feature correspondence generation.

One optical flow feature correspondence processor 118 implementation employs optical flow methods to calculate the motion between two image frames, taken at times t and t+Δt at each voxel position. One such method, called a differential method, is based on local Taylor series approximations of the image signal, using partial derivatives with respect to the spatial and temporal coordinates. Accordingly, in an implementation, processing includes:

-   -   Input: last image, current image, a list of detected feature         locations from the last image,     -   Output: a list of locations of the last image's detected         features' in the current image     -   Assumption: brightness consistency, image changes by and only by         motion     -   Action 1: predict the output locations by either just assuming         there is no motion so the current locations are the same as last         frame's feature locations, OR use inertial information retrieved         from an IMU to predict the locations.     -   Action 2: refine the pixel coordinate for each feature point by         searching around the predicted location, matching patches, and         using matching score to determine the refined position.         Accordingly, the technology disclosed can provide         implementations with the ability to gain increased performance         by using inertial information from the IMU to narrow the search         and save time.

IMU-Camera Coordinate Transformation:

In some implementations, the IMU 202 and the cameras 208, 210 do not reside at the same physical location, there is a distance between the IMU 202 and the cameras 208, 210. Accordingly, in order to enable later processes in the localization pipeline to treat the IMU 202 and the cameras 208, 210 as being co-located, on implementation determines a transformation matrix between the IMU 202 and the cameras 208, 210, which can be achieved from an offline production or post-production calibration stage. In CU 100, this transformation matrix is stored locally, and applied to the IMU data. This technique enables later processes to be able to treat the IMU 202 and the cameras 208, 210 to be co-located.

Referring now to Referring now to FIG. 3, which shows a simplified block diagram of a visual-inertial positioning system 300 implementing visual-inertial sensor 200. Visual inertial positioning system 300 includes a processor 332, a memory 334, an inertial measurement unit IMU 202 and one or more cameras providing grayscale imaging 208 and color imaging 210, and a communications interface 342. One or more additional I/O features 336 are included to address implementation specific needs, such as a visual presentation interface 378, an audio presentation interface 379, sensor(s) for detecting tactile input (e.g., keyboards, keypads, touchpads, mouse, trackball, joystick and the like) 380 and non-tactile input (e.g., microphone(s), sonar sensors and the like) 382. Memory 334 can be used to store instructions to be executed by processor 332 as well as input and/or output data associated with execution of the instructions. In particular, memory 334 contains instructions, conceptually illustrated as a group of modules described in greater detail below, that control the operation of processor 332 and its interaction with the other hardware components. An operating system directs the execution of low-level, basic system functions such as memory allocation, file management and operation of mass storage devices. The operating system may be or include a variety of operating systems such as Microsoft WINDOWS operating system, the Unix operating system, the Linux operating system, the Xenix operating system, the IBM AIX operating system, the Hewlett Packard UX operating system, the Novell NETWARE operating system, the Sun Microsystems SOLARIS operating system, the OS/2 operating system, the BeOS operating system, the MACINTOSH operating system, the APACHE operating system, an OPENACTION operating system, iOS, Android or other mobile operating systems, or another operating system of platform.

The computing environment may also include other removable/non-removable, volatile/nonvolatile computer storage media. For example, a hard disk drive may read or write to non-removable, nonvolatile magnetic media. A magnetic disk drive may read from or write to a removable, nonvolatile magnetic disk, and an optical disk drive may read from or write to a removable, nonvolatile optical disk such as a CD-ROM or other optical media. Other removable/non-removable, volatile/nonvolatile computer storage media that can be used in the exemplary operating environment include, but are not limited to, magnetic tape cassettes, flash memory cards, digital versatile disks, digital video tape, solid state RAM, solid state ROM, and the like. The storage media are typically connected to the system bus through a removable or non-removable memory interface.

In an embodiment, the processor 332 is a NEON ARM processor implementing a single input-multiple data (SIMD) architecture as a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture. Depending on implementation, however, processor 332 can alternatively be a realized using a specific purpose microcontroller, peripheral integrated circuit element, a CSIC (customer-specific integrated circuit), an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit), a logic circuit, a digital signal processor, a programmable logic device such as an FPGA (field-programmable gate array), a PLD (programmable logic device), a PLA (programmable logic array), an RFID processor, smart chip, or any other device or arrangement of devices that are capable of implementing the actions of the processes of the technology disclosed.

Communications interface 342 can include hardware and/or software that enables communication between visual inertial positioning system 300 and other systems controlling or enabling customer hardware and applications (hereinafter, a “host system” or “host”) such as for example, a robot or other guided mobile platform, an autonomous vehicle, a virtual reality-augmented reality wearable device (VR/AR headset) or the like (not shown in FIG. 3 for clarity sake). Cameras 208, 210, as well as sensors such as IMU 202 can be coupled to processor 332 via a variety of communications interfaces and protocols implemented by hardware and software combinations. Thus, for example, positioning system 300 can include one or more camera data ports and/or motion detector ports (not shown in FIG. 3 for clarity sake) to which the cameras and motion detectors can be connected (via conventional plugs and jacks), as well as hardware and/or software signal processors to modify data signals received from the cameras and motion detectors (e.g., to reduce noise or reformat data) prior to providing the signals as inputs to a fast accurate stable adaptive tracking (“FASAT”) process 344 executing on processor 332. In some implementations, visual-inertial positioning system 300 can also transmit signals to the cameras and sensors, e.g., to activate or deactivate them, to control camera settings (frame rate, image quality, sensitivity, etc.), to control sensor settings (calibration, sensitivity levels, etc.), or the like. Such signals can be transmitted, e.g., in response to control signals from processor 332, which may in turn be generated in response to user input or other detected events.

Instructions defining FASAT process 344 are stored in memory 334, and these instructions, when executed, perform analysis on image frames captured by the cameras 208, 210 and inertial data captured by the IMU 202 connected to visual inertial positioning system 300. In one implementation, FASAT process 344 includes various logical processes, such as a feature extractor 352 that receives a raw image and determines a salient points' representation of objects in the image thereby representing the geometry understanding of the objects from a machine's perspective view. In some implementations, feature extractor 352 analyzes images (e.g., image frames captured via cameras 208, 210) to detect edges of an object therein and/or other information about the object's location. A sensor fusion tracking process 354 uses feature extraction results and inertial data from IMU 202 to generate pose accurately and rapidly. A smart interaction map 356 enables using a known map of obstructions to localize the sensor 200. The map is built using mapping functionality of mapping process 392, which is described in further detail herein below. A Re-localizer process 358 recovers device positional awareness when the device has lost track of device position. A system diagnostic and response (SDAR) 366 manages of current localizing state of the device and provide response strategy.

A mapping process 392 generates a hybrid occupancy grid that maps the space and objects recognized by the feature extractor 352. The hybrid occupancy grid includes (i) a point cloud representation of points in space located in the image frames and (ii) one or more x-y plane occupancy grids arranged at heights to intersect points on the extracted features.

In some implementations, other processing 394 analyzes audio or ultrasonic signals (e.g., audio signals captured via sonar or audio sensors comprising non-tactile input 382) to localize objects and obstructions by, for example, time distance of arrival, multilateration or the like. (“multilateration is a navigation technique based on the measurement of the difference in distance to two or more stations at known locations that broadcast signals at known times. Audio signals place the object on a known surface, and the strength and variation of the signals can be used to detect object's presence. If both audio and image information is simultaneously available, both types of information can be analyzed and reconciled to produce a more detailed and/or accurate path analysis.

In some implementations, other processing 394 determines paths to track and predict device movements in space based upon the hybrid occupancy grid generated by mapping process 392. Some implementations 394 includes an augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) environment that provides integration of virtual objects reflecting real objects (e.g., virtual presence of friend 915 in FIG. 9) as well as synthesized objects 1015 in FIG. 10 for presentation to user of device 925 in FIG. 9 via presentation interface 378 to provide a personal virtual experience. One or more applications 396 can be loaded into memory 334 (or otherwise made available to processor 332) to augment or customize functioning of device 200 thereby enabling the system 300 to function as a platform. Successive camera images are analyzed at the pixel level to extract object movements and velocities. In some implementations, presentation interface 378 includes a video feed integrator provides integration of live video feed from the cameras 208, 210 and one or more virtual objects. Video feed integrator governs processing of video information from disparate types of cameras 208, 210. For example, information received from pixels that provide monochromatic imaging and from pixels that provide color imaging (e.g., RGB) can be separated by integrator and processed differently. Image information from grayscale sensors can be used mainly for agent localization that extracts features from images and camera 210 is a colored camera that provides a plurality of functions: firstly, to extract features from images in agent localization (similar to the usage of grayscale camera), and secondly, to provide raw information for deep learning based tasks, including object recognition, object tracking, image captioning, and the like. Information from one type of sensor can be used to enhance, correct, and/or corroborate information from another type of sensor. Information from one type of sensor can be favored in some types of situational or environmental conditions (e.g., low light, fog, bright light, and so forth). The device can select between providing presentation output based upon one or the other types of image information, either automatically or by receiving a selection from the user. An imaging integrator can be used in conjunction with AR/VR environment control the creation of the environment presented to the user via presentation interface 378.

Presentation interface 378, audio presentation 379, non-tactile input 382, and communications interface 342 can be used to facilitate user interaction via device 200 with Visual inertial positioning system 300. These components can be of highly customized design, generally conventional design or combinations thereof as desired to provide any type of user interaction. In some implementations, results of analyzing captured images using inertial measuring unit 202 and cameras 208, 210 and FASAT program 352 can be interpreted as representing objects and obstacles in 3D space. For example, a robot equipped with visual-inertial sensor 200 can perform path planning and/or obstacle avoidance across a surface that has been analyzed using FASAT program 352, and the results of this analysis can be interpreted as an occupancy map by some other program executing on processor 332 (e.g., a motion planner, localization and tracking process, or other application). Thus, by way of illustration, a robot might use sweeping of cameras 208, 210 across a room in order to “map” a space currently imaged to a hybrid point grid that can be used by a host device such as a monitor, VR headset or the like via presentation interface 378, to provide visual input of the area that the robot is “seeing”. Smart interaction map 356 may use the representation of space built by mapping 392 to plan a path for a robot or mobile platform through the space, e.g., to improve localization and tracking of the robot or platform through the space.

It will be appreciated that Visual-inertial positioning system 300 is illustrative and that variations and modifications are possible. Visual inertial positioning systems can be implemented in a variety of form factors, including “cloud” computing systems of servers and networks, desktop systems, laptop systems, tablets, smart phones or personal digital assistants, and so on. A particular implementation may include other functionality not described herein for clarity sake. In some implementations, one or more cameras and two or more microphones may be built into the visual-inertial system 300 or may be supplied as separate components. Further, an image or audio analyzer can be implemented using only a subset of Visual inertial positioning system 300 components (e.g., as a processor executing program code, an ASIC, or a fixed-function digital signal processor, with suitable I/O interfaces to receive image data and output analysis results).

While Visual inertial positioning system 300 is described herein with reference to particular blocks, it is to be understood that the blocks are defined for convenience of description and are not intended to imply a particular physical arrangement of component parts. Further, the blocks need not correspond to physically distinct components. To the extent that physically distinct components are used, connections between components (e.g., for data communication) can be wired and/or wireless as desired. Thus, for example, execution of feature extractor 352 by processor 332 can cause processor 332 to operate inertial measurement unit 202 and cameras 208, 210 to capture images and/or audio signals of an object traveling across and in contact with a surface to detect its entrance by analyzing the image and/or audio data.

Tracking

Tracking refers to capabilities rendered by system hardware and functional processes that enable a controlled device (robot, mobile platform, or VR/AR headset, goggles, or other hardware) to continuously localize itself and have positional awareness e.g., the sensor system can determine where it is in the real world.

Architecture for Tracking System

FIG. 4 illustrates example architecture for a tracking system implementation. As shown in FIG. 4, components and information flows between components of an example fast accurate stable adaptive tracking (“FASAT”) process 344 of FIG. 3 are illustrated by feature extractor (FE) 402, sensor fusion based tracker (SFT) 411, smart interaction with map (SIM) processor 414, a system diagnostics and response (SDAR) processor 403 and a Re-locator (RELOC) 422. The data flows and operation of one example implementation of these components will next be described.

Feature Extraction

A feature extractor (FE) 402 represents the geometric understanding of a space from a machine's perspective view. Feature extractor 402 receives raw image information from control unit 100 and provides a salient points' representation hybrid point cloud map to a sensor fusion tracker (SFT) 411. One implementation of a feature extractor 402 performs a variety of actions including image preprocessing, feature detection, and feature descriptor preparation.

Image processing tasks include performing Gaussian blur and gamma correction on raw image data.

Feature Detection: Optical Flow

Optical flow gives 2D-2D correspondence between previous image and a current image. Feature extractor 402 generates a hierarchy of levels; each level generation is aligned with optical flow needs, and therefore need only be computed once.

Processed images are stored in a multiple hierarchical patch and/or undistorted patch. In an example implementation, as levels in the hierarchy increase, the more blur exists in the image. At each level in the hierarchy, the size of the image is reduced to ¼ of the size of the image from which it is derived, e.g. the size of the image in the previous level. For example, if an image on the first (“zero level”) has a size 640×480, then the size of the corresponding image on the next higher level (“first level”) has a size 320×240, and an next corresponding image at the next higher level (“second level”) has a size 160×120. If the same feature point appears at more than one level, then that feature point is determined by the system to be a strong feature point. In the foregoing example, a scale factor of 2 is used, however, any scale factor can be selected, e.g., a scale factor of 1.6 provides the original 640×480 image with a next level image having a resolution of 400×300.

One feature extractor 402 implementation employs optical flow methods to calculate the motion between two image frames, taken at times t and t+Δt at each voxel position. One such method, called a differential method, is based on local Taylor series approximations of the image signal, using partial derivatives with respect to the spatial and temporal coordinates. Accordingly, in an implementation, processing includes:

-   -   Input: last image, current image, a list of detected feature         locations from the last image,     -   Output: a list of locations of the last image's detected         features' in the current image     -   Assumption: brightness consistency, image changes by and only by         motion     -   Action 1: predict the output locations by either just assuming         there is no motion so the current locations are the same as last         frame's feature locations, OR use inertial information retrieved         from an IMU to predict the locations.     -   Action 2: refine the pixel coordinate for each feature point by         searching around the predicted location, matching patches, and         using matching score to determine the refined position.         Accordingly, the technology disclosed can provide         implementations with the ability to gain increased performance         by using inertial information from the IMU to narrow the search         and save time.

Feature Detection: Shi-Tomasi

One implementation of feature extraction processor 402 uses NEON-accelerated Shi-Tomasi feature detection with spatial binning in order to obtain features from regions to cover as much as possible for the full image. The feature extractor 402 uses IMU and the pose information received from sensor fusion tracker 411 in order to dynamically decide the regions to track and the parameters to use. Features are “interesting” parts of an image. Accordingly, in an implementation, processing includes:

-   -   Action 1: calculate Eigen value of the intensity value of each         pixel and its surrounding pixels; and determine (i) whether the         feature is of interest; and (ii) for features of interest, a         type of feature         -   two small Eigen values: feature is not interesting         -   one small, one big value: feature is likely an edge         -   two big values: feature is likely a corner         -   other type of features     -   Action 2: refine         -   Apply non-maximum suppression         -   Apply spatial binning         -   Apply heuristics         -   Apply other types of refinement

Feature Descriptor: ORB Descriptor

One implementation of feature extractor 402 uses a SIMD-accelerated ORB descriptor to describe features. The description of a feature can be used for matching purposes and describing a feature's uniqueness. The ORB descriptor approach was selected for its relative rotational invariance and immunity to Gaussian image noise. One example of an ORB feature detector and binary descriptor can be found at “ORB feature detector and binary descriptor”, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes. For further information on ORB Descriptor, reference may be had to Ethan Rublee, et al., “ORB: an efficient alternative to SIFT or SURF”, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.

Bag-of-Words

One implementation of feature extractor 402 performs bag-of-words extraction, determining from one image a byte array, sparse histogram over vocabulary. Accordingly, in an implementation, Bag-of-words processing includes using a list of feature descriptors in one image to extract Bag-of-words feature for one image. For example, in an image having 400 features with 400 corresponding descriptors, and a bag-of-word feature with the size of 256 bits. The resulting Bag-of-words is a 256 bit array, and one image only needs/has one 256 bit array. Bag-of-words is useful in performing relocalization as described herein below in further detail. Bag-of-words can indicate among A, B, C images, an image D has a matching score individually D-A, D-B, D-C. Say for example that D-B has the highest score, then the camera taking image D is closest to the camera pose used when taking image B, not A or C.

One implementation of feature extractor 402 adaptively adjusts a threshold that is applied to a number of features needed in order for the system to keep track of a moving object. Such intelligent thresholds include a threshold that is adaptively adjusted based upon device movement, sensor readings, situational or environmental variables (e.g., low light, fog, bright light, and so forth) or combinations thereof. Once sufficient number of features (e.g., above the threshold) are identified, the system will continue to track an object. Otherwise, the system does not track the object. Feature extractor 402 will adaptively adjust the threshold based on device movement and other sensor levels.

SFT: Generating Pose Information from Feature Extraction Results and Inertial Data

Sensor fusion based tracker (SFT) 411 determines how to smartly use feature extraction results and inertial data from IMU 202 to generate pose accurately and rapidly. Sensor fusion based tracker 411 performs initialization for the system state, feature extractor initial state, interaction with map state, and other states. Sensor fusion based tracker 411 has logic to decide how to initialize the state including use how many first sample IMUs, how many images to skip, and any other initialization steps for specific hardware.

In an implementation, sensor fusion based tracker 411 performs IMU buffer management. Timestamps of IMU data frames are corrected and aligned. Additionally, IMU information that has not been processed yet is maintained in a buffer.

Propagation:

Implementations can employ extended Kalman filtering (EKF), shown in a general nonlinear model form by equations (1), to extrapolate an initial pose using inertial data from the multi-axis IMU, to generate a propagated pose: {dot over (x)}=f(x)+w z=h(x)+n  (1) where x denotes a state vector, f denotes a nonlinear function, h denotes observation nonlinear function, n denotes measurement noise, z denotes an observation vector, and w denotes a noise vector.

A linearized version of the discrete-time model of equation (1) is useful for covariance propagation and update, as well as gain computation is illustrated by equations (2): {tilde over (X)} _(l+1)≈ϕ_(l) {tilde over (X)} _(l) +w _(l) {tilde over (r)}≈H _(l) {tilde over (X)} _(l) +n _(l)  (2)

In an implementation, IMU data alone is used to perform propagation of the EKF. This enables certain implementations to provide fast results and at relatively low computation costs. An update process described below is employed to correct for “drifting” that occurs when only inertial information is used in the EKF to determine pose. Propagation can be performed in a number of ways: (i) the propagation happens right after an inertial measurement taken by the IMU arrives; or (ii) delayed propagation happens in batch right after an image taken by the visual sensors arrives but before the update procedure described below is performed. Of course, wheel odometry and/or user-defined control can also be used to perform propagation. In one implementation, a “plug-and-play” decision engine will decide if, when, and how to do multiple types of propagation.

Update:

In an implementation, an update process is performed using image information together with IMU buffer samples, which can correct the pose which may be drifted from propagation. In a single observation implementation, based on the current image observation, the information needed for propagation, e.g., features, poses, map points, etc. is prepared. Then 2D-3D correspondence information for the optical flow tracked 2D features is obtained by directly using 2D-2D correspondences from optical flow tracking results. For the remaining 3D map points, smartly search over 3D with adaptive parameters by: (i) if the remaining number of points is small, e.g., below a threshold, perform a linear search, otherwise, (ii) if the remaining number of points is fairly big, e.g., above a threshold, perform a log(n) search with the use of a kd-tree or octree. During search, use previous time period velocity/acceleration to predict a pose so as to narrow the search region. Next, perform update, and generate pose for the current frame using only “good outstanding” points. Alternatively, perform the update twice: first only with high weights “good outstanding” points, then with all the map points. As used herein, the term “good outstanding” points denotes high quality points, e.g., those points having smaller reprojection error and/or being tracked many times in a good state, which can be selected by application of some heuristics.

In a multiple observation implementation, based on multiple previous image observation, information from multiple poses is used in the extended Kalman filter described herein with reference to equations (1) and (2). Every feature's whole life is used in the extended Kalman filter.

SIM: Smart Map Interaction and Localize

Smart interaction with map (SIM) processor 414 enables smart interaction by a device being guided (i.e., receiving positional awareness information from visual-inertial sensor system 300) with a known map in order to localize itself. Accordingly, one implementation of a smart interaction map processor 414 processing includes:

-   -   Perform a query of the map based on a need and a current status.         Some query components included by specific implementations are         map points (xyz, uncertainty, average reprojection error, etc.),         keyrigs' poses, 2D-3D constraint information, and occupancy grid         (one layer or multiple layer). As used herein, the term keyrig         denotes a set of image data received. In some implementations,         the sets of image data include feature points and pose         information. The pose information includes a location of the         mobile device and view of the camera that captured the image         data. The sets of image data are referred to collectively as         keyrigs.     -   If the map as a whole is not big, e.g., meets a particular         threshold size, return the entire map.     -   Otherwise, if the map is big, e.g., meets or exceeds a         particular threshold size and covers large areas, e.g., spatial         area meets or exceeds a particular threshold, smartly grab a         local region of map based on the device's current position.     -   If some area of the map is known to have bad quality, don't use         it.     -   Adaptively down-sample map based on system performance according         to an adaptive parameter. For example: (i) if the 3D         feature-based tracking process has been accurate, e.g., below a         threshold number of errors or invocations of relocalization         processing to relocalize a device that has lost its place, then         reduce the sample size to conserve resources, otherwise, (ii) if         the device is getting lost frequently, e.g., meets or exceeds a         threshold, then increase the sample size to provide better         tracking.

SDAR: Manage Localization State and Response Strategy

System diagnostics and response (SDAR) processor 403 performs system level management of current localizing state of the visual-inertial sensor 200 and provides response strategy. In one implementation, the system diagnostics and response processor 403 monitors tracked map points and corresponding reprojection error, monitors the longevity of untracked map points, and suggests actions to mapping module, monitors device speed/acceleration/jitter/drift, monitors map “activity” (i.e., is it updated regularly?), performs new added map contribute enough to the overall mapping (i.e., so it's not doing useless hovering?), monitors keyrig topology (i.e., stretch enough or too much?), suggests when and where the device should add keyrig, and monitors feature extractor pipeline

Relocalize a Lost Device

Re-locator 422 recovers a device that has lost track of its positional from this state. Once re-locator 422 returns the lost device back on track, the device can resume normal interacting with smart interaction map processor 414, and/or can contribute to map building, using the techniques described herein below.

Relocalization

FIG. 5A illustrates an example of a relocalization process in one implementation. Accordingly, one implementation of relocalization processing 500A includes:

-   -   In action 510, a search strategy is selected using a situational         heuristic. For example, if there are many keyrigs, (e.g., >50)         and a fast recovery is needed, then select a search strategy of         performing a best match (on Bag-of-Words features) among the         keyrigs, and using the best-matched keyrig's pose as end-result.         In another example, if it is determined that the system is well         on-track before lost, then select a search over only the local         (e.g., most recent x keyrigs) keyrigs for fast recovery. In a         further example, if the system needs multiple hypotheses before         further refinement, then select a search strategy that includes         using the few best matches (on Bag-of-Words features). Other         types of search strategies can be triggered using appropriate         heuristics indicating a correspondence between the search         strategy and one or more environmental variables (e.g., lighting         change, visibility change due to fog, steam or mist, etc.) or         one or more state variables (e.g., previously was tracking well         before getting lost, had just performed a previous attempt to         relocalize which has now failed, etc.).     -   In action 520, the keyrigs are searched using the selected         search strategy in order to find among the keyrigs a keyrig with         bag of words description closest to a bag of words description         of a current image.     -   In action 530, determine whether the match quality is         sufficient. This can be determined by applying a threshold to a         quality of match indication or by other means. For example, a         match quality indicator ranges from 0, denoting complete         difference, to 1, denoting an exact match. A corresponding match         quality threshold can be 0.85 indicating a minimum passing match         quality. If the match quality is sufficient, then continue with         action 540. Otherwise, continue with action 590 to check whether         an alternative search strategy can be employed, or if available         applicable search strategies have been exhausted, and continue         processing in action 510 with an alternative search strategy or         in action 595 return an error condition indicating that the         relocalization failed.     -   In an action 540, correlate feature points of the current image         with mapped points from the keyrig selected in action 520,         yielding <2D, 3D> point pairings. The point pairings indicate a         relationship between the 2D current image and the 3D map of the         selected keyrig.     -   In an action 550, determine if the quantity of points is         determined to be sufficient. This can be determined by applying         a threshold to the quantity of 2D image points having a         correspondence with a 3D point in the map of the selected         keyrig. For example, in one implementation 6 or more points is         sufficient; while in another implementation 20-30 points are         required. If the quantity of points is sufficient, then continue         with action 560. Otherwise, continue with action 590 to check         whether an alternative search strategy can be employed, or if         available applicable search strategies have been exhausted, and         continue processing in action 510 with an alternative search         strategy or in action 595 return an error condition indicating         that the relocalization failed.     -   In action 560 refine the pose from the best matched keyrig and         perform perspective-n-points (PnP)—or other pose estimation         method that computes a pose from 2 sets of 2D image features.         While any of a wide variety of PnP implementations can be used         to refine pose information, one OpenCV API called solvePnPRansac         has been found to perform acceptably in an example         implementation. Further description of the solvePnPRansac API         can be obtained with reference to “Camera Calibration and 3D         Reconstruction”, which is incorporated herein by reference for         all purposes.     -   In an action 570, determine whether the refined pose is         reasonable. In one implementation a refined pose is considered         reasonable if the refined pose meets criteria: (i) the refined         pose is sufficiently similar (e.g., within a tolerance or below         a threshold) in position and perspective from the pose of the         identified keyrig selected based upon the matching in action         520; and (ii) reprojection of 3D points in the <2D, 3D> point         pairings identified in action 540 yields a new 2D point on the         2D image plane, where the new 2D point has coordinates         sufficiently similar (e.g., within a tolerance or below a         threshold) to the original 2D point of the <2D, 3D> point         pairing. If the defined pose is reasonable, then continue with         action 580. Otherwise, continue with action 590 to check whether         an alternative search strategy can be employed, or if available         applicable search strategies have been exhausted, and continue         processing in action 510 with an alternative search strategy or         in action 595 return an error condition indicating that the         relocalization failed.     -   In an action 580, commence tracking with the refined pose. Also,         record the whole recovery information, and:         -   update machine state with the refined pose information as             the current pose         -   put the device back on track with some uncertainty

FIG. 5B illustrates an example of a relocaliztion search strategy selection process in one implementation. Accordingly, one implementation of the processing 500B provides selecting a search strategy using a situational heuristic that includes:

-   -   In action 515, determine whether there are many keyrigs,         (e.g., >50) and whether a fast recovery is needed. If this is         the case, then in an action 525, select a search strategy of         performing a best match (on Bag-of-Words features) among the         keyrigs, and using the best-matched keyrig's pose as end-result.     -   In an action 535, it is determined whether the system was well         on-track before lost. If this is the case, then in an action         545, select a search over limited to the local keyrigs (e.g.,         most recent X keyrigs) for fast recovery.     -   In an action 555, determine whether the system needs multiple         hypotheses before further refinement. If this is the case, then         in action 565, select a search strategy that includes using the         few best matches (on Bag-of-Words features).     -   In an action 575 a default search strategy is selected in the         event that a situation is encountered that does not meet         criterion specified by at least one of the heuristics. Other         types of search strategies can be triggered using appropriate         heuristics indicating a correspondence between the search         strategy and one or more environmental variables (e.g., lighting         change, visibility change due to fog, steam or mist, etc.) or         one or more state variables (e.g., previously was tracking well         before getting lost, had just performed a previous attempt to         relocalize which has now failed, etc.).

Geometric information obtained by 3D feature-based tracking is used to construct a hybrid grid that represents the features in a map useful in guiding a mobile device. The process of performing this task is described next with reference to examples depicted by FIGS. 8, 9 and 10.

Mapping

In implementations, geometric information obtained by a 3D feature-based tracking process is represented using a descriptive point cloud representation. The descriptive point cloud is a set of sparse 3D points, where each point encodes a 3D geometric location, an uncertainty of the geometric location, and a set of 2D location plus appearance-based descriptors, each observed by a keyrig. A keyrig contains (i) a Timestamp where the images in the keyrig is captured; (ii) a pose (i.e. the transformation from the visual-inertial sensor's 200 coordinate to the map coordinate at the current time) and its uncertainty; and (iii) a sequence of IMU readings starting from a first temporal point before the timestamp to a second temporal point after the timestamp. Some implementations further include a flag to specify whether the visual-inertial sensor 200 is moving or static. This flag can be set from information obtained from the IMU readings.

Hybrid Representation

Implementations represent the spatial information perceived by a 3D feature-based mapping system and optionally an active ranging sensor (placed in parallel to the ground plane) using a hybrid point grid representation. One example implementation of a hybrid point grid representation combines a descriptive point cloud and a multi-layer 2D occupancy grid map.

The occupancy grid map can be a plane oriented substantially perpendicular to the direction of gravity. Each layer has a specific height. (The layer on the floor is typically 0 according to one convention.). FIG. 6 illustrates an example of an occupancy grid map in one implementation. Occupancy grid 600 of FIG. 6 indicates a single layer, such as a floor layer 602, mapped by an implementation of the visual-inertial sensor 200. The white portions of occupancy grid 600 indicate empty space—in other words space that has been determined by visual-inertial sensor 200 to be unoccupied. For example, when visual-inertial sensor 200 is able to look through the room door and window to note space beyond the walls of the room that is unoccupied, these regions are marked accordingly in occupancy grid 600. Portions in solid black indicate space that is occupied by an object or obstacle. The gray portions indicate space that the visual-inertial sensor 200 has not yet determined whether these spaces are occupied or empty.

A 3 degrees of freedom transform that relates the descriptive point cloud coordinates to the gravity-based coordinates. For example, if the normal vector of the ground plane (i.e., gravity) is known, first rotate the point cloud so that the z-axis of the point cloud is parallel to the gravity, using a 3-by-3 rotation matrix R=R_pitch*R_roll. Then, (optionally) translate the point by [0, 0. T_z] so that the z=0 is on the ground plane. Note, a normal 3-by-3 rotation matrix has 3 degrees of freedom (R_yaw,*R_pitch*R_roll), however in this case are only 2 degrees. A normal 3-by-1 translation has 3 degrees of freedom ([t_x, t_y, t_z]), but here there is only 1 degree.

Creating a Point Cloud for Features Representation

Implementations incrementally create a descriptive point cloud from the results of 3D feature-based tracking by adding keyrigs according to a criterion, such as in a following example. Result of 3D feature based tracking is received in sets of image data that include feature points and pose information. The pose information includes a location of the mobile device and view of the camera that captured the image data. These sets are referred to collectively as keyrigs. Accordingly, an implementation builds a descriptive point cloud by selecting keyrigs using one or more criteria such as for example the following:

-   -   The first image frame is selected as a keyrig, and the device         coordinate frame at that timestamp become the coordinates of the         descriptive point cloud. This establishes a frame of reference.     -   The latest keyrig's timestamp is less than current timestamp for         a time threshold (typically 2 sec).     -   The distance between the current tracked pose to the latest         keyrig's location is larger than a threshold (e.g., x meters).     -   The distance between the current tracked pose to the latest         keyrig's pointing angle is larger than a threshold (e.g., y         degrees)     -   The current image contains a percentage of features not included         in the current descriptive point cloud.     -   The device is currently static. This information can be obtained         from inertial information from the IMU's signals.

If the keyrig being considered for addition contains features not included in the current descriptive point cloud, triangulate the new features from images captured from the device at this timestamp to obtain the points in the device's coordinate frame. Add the new points to the map by transforming the points from the device's coordinate frame to the map's coordinate frame. Noteworthy is that some implementations include one or more of (i) triangulating new feature points across images from a current/same keyrig (e.g. between left and right cameras), (ii) triangulating new feature points across images from two different keyrigs, wherein the two different keyrigs are not necessarily in sequence (e.g. left camera from keyrig 1 to left camera from keyrig 10), and (iii) triangulating new feature points from images in keyrigs chosen based upon a criterion (e.g., smart selection of an “optimal” keyrig). The transform is determined using feature-based tracking or other methods.

Refining a Point Cloud

In one implementation, a descriptive point cloud from the 3D feature-based tracking is refined by obtaining an “optimal” (i) pose of each keyrig and (ii) 3D locations of all the points that minimizes weighted sum of re-projection errors of all the points projected to their observed keyrigs, and (iii) optionally, the accelerometer readings from keyrigs with static flag must be [0, 0, 1] to force the z-axis of the map coordinate to be closer to gravity direction, while fulfilling the following constraint (if applicable): the pose moves along a plane (if the device is mounted on a vehicle with planar motion).

In one implementation, refining a descriptive point cloud from the 3D feature-based tracking is performed with limited computation resources by the following processing:

-   -   Randomly sample N number of keyrigs from the entire set of         keyrigs.     -   Accurately refine the pose of the sample set of keyrigs and the         3D points observed in these keyrigs by minimizing the weighted         sum of the (i) re-projection errors of all the points projected         to their observed keyrigs, and (ii) optionally, the         accelerometer readings from keyrigs with static flag must be [0,         0, 1] to force the z-axis of the map coordinate to be closer to         gravity direction, while fulfilling the following constraints         (if applicable): the pose moves along a plane (if the device is         mounted on a vehicle with planar motion).     -   Repeat the sampling and minimizing except fixing the 3D points         and the poses that have already been optimized from the previous         iteration.     -   Iterate until a desired percentage of keyrigs and points are         optimized.

Creating a Hybrid Point Grid

In one implementation, an initial hybrid point grid representation is created from a descriptive point cloud using the following processing:

-   -   Transform the descriptive point cloud from its original         coordinate frame to a coordinate frame where z-axis is along the         gravity direction. This transformation has 2 degrees of freedom         (in rotation).     -   Initialize a 2D occupancy grid map for layers that cover the x-y         points in the descriptive point cloud.     -   Each layer of the occupancy grid map is filled in by points (in         the descriptive point cloud) within a height range using ray         tracing process.

Refining a Hybrid Point Grid

In one implementation, the hybrid point grid representation is refined using information from active sensors using the following processing:

-   -   Obtain the pose, (transform from the device coordinate to the         map's coordinate) where each active sensor's signal is captured,         from the trajectory of the device in the map's coordinate frame.     -   Use ray tracing process to update the 2D occupancy grid map.

In one implementation, the refining hybrid point grid representation from an updated descriptive point cloud is performed using the following processing:

-   -   Transform the descriptive point cloud's coordinate frame to the         gravity-based coordinate frame.     -   Use ray tracing process to determine which cells to update from         each point in the descriptive point cloud.

Estimating a Trajectory for a Guided Device

In one implementation, an offline trajectory of a device between two consecutive keyrigs (i.e. from keyrig k to keyrig k+1) in a descriptive point cloud is estimated using the following processing:

-   -   Initialize the image frame that creates keyrig k to be at its         pose stored in the descriptive point cloud.     -   Use the “3D feature-based tracking process” as described herein         under section heading “Tracking” to track the image frames         between the two keyrigs. Each image frame has a 6-degrees of         freedom pose, and a set of correspondences of 3D map point to 2D         image observed location.     -   Force the image frame that creates keyrig k+1 to be at its pose         stored in the descriptive point cloud.     -   Refine all the poses by minimizing the sum of reprojection         errors of all observed locations. The reprojection error is the         error between a reprojected point in the camera coordinate frame         and the original point. FIG. 7 illustrates an example of         reprojection 700. In FIG. 7, some points in the reference frame         of camera 702 are used to triangulate one or more new 3D points         P 704 in the world coordinate frame. Due to errors in the         calibration of the camera(s) 702, the spatial position of point         P 704 will not be completely accurate. The reprojection error         706 can be determined from the resulting 3D point P 704         re-projected into the coordinates of the camera 602 (using the         calibration data for the camera), obtaining a new point         {circumflex over (p)} 708 near the originally projected p 710.         The reprojection error 706 is the straight line distance between         the original point p 710 and the reprojected point {circumflex         over (p)} 708.

Estimating a Transform for a Descriptive Point Cloud and Gravity Based Frame

In one implementation, the 2 degrees of freedom coordinate transform between the descriptive point cloud to a coordinate where z-axis is along the gravity direction is estimated using any of the following methods:

-   -   Measuring the gravity direction from IMU (accelerometer) while         it is static, and find a rotation matrix that transforms the         gravity direction to [0, 0, 1].     -   Obtain at least 3 points on the ground-plane from the         descriptive point cloud to estimate the ground-plane's normal in         the original coordinate. Find a rotation matrix that transforms         the ground-plane's normal to [0, 0, 1] or [0, 0, −1].     -   Offline calibrate the relation between the visual-inertial         sensor 200 to the ground by placing a known planar pattern on         the ground to determine the rotation matrix.         Robot Implementation

FIG. 8 illustrates an example model of robot guidance using image and inertial information techniques described herein. Examples of robot applications that benefit from employing positional awareness techniques such as described herein include:

-   -   Caregiver and Service robots (traveling on a ground plane)     -   A robot vacuuming/mopping/cleaning the floor.     -   A robot being commanded to carry objects around the environment.     -   A telepresence robot moving around a remote environment         automatically.     -   A robot butler that follows a person around.

In each of the scenarios listed above, the robot utilizes the technology disclosed herein in order to track its own location and to recognize the objects that it encounters. Also, since the robot performs many complex tasks, each with real-time constraints, it is beneficial that the sensing be done rapidly to accelerate the perception pipeline. In implementations, this can be achieved by offloading some computation from the main processor to the visual-inertial sensor 200. In addition, since it is a mobile robot, which carries limited storage capacity battery, energy consumption is a design point. In implementations, some computational tasks are off loaded from the main processor to the visual-inertial sensor 200 to reduce power consumption, thereby enabling implementations to achieve overall energy efficiency. Cost is an issue in mobile robots, since lowering the cost of the robot makes the robot affordable to more customers. Hence cost can be another factor for sensor and guidance system design. In implementations, one low-cost grayscale sensor is used for localization tasks, and one colored sensor for recognition tasks. This design point enables these implementations to significantly reduce the cost over a stereo colored sensor designs without sacrificing performance.

In FIG. 8, the walls, corners and door 823 of room 800 as well as the travels of service robot 825 on the floor of room 800 are reflected in the hybrid point grid, comprised of descriptive point cloud 845 and occupancy grid 855, developed by the visual-inertial sensor 200 using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section. The occupancy grid 855 is a part of the hybrid point grid that is a layer of the multi-layer 2D occupancy grid map described in the Mapping section. To build a map of an unknown (newly exposed) environment, the visual-inertial sensor 200 equipped robot 825 keeps track of its pose using the technology described herein above in the Tracking section while incrementally building an initial descriptive point cloud using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section. Then, the robot 825 builds an occupancy grid 855 to complete the hybrid point grid from the initial descriptive point cloud 845 using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section.

Obtain Real Time Image and Inertial Information

In order to track its location, the robot senses its own movement through visual-inertial sensor 200. The visual-inertial sensor 200 generates reliable inertial data so that the tracking and mapping pipeline that follows can accurately infer the robot's location. FIG. 8 illustrates an example robot guidance application in which one implementation can be embodied. As illustrated by FIG. 8, robot 825 implements visual-inertial sensor 200 to self-localize within a room 800. The robot 825 in FIG. 8 employs the cameras 208, 210 of a visual sensor 200 in order to capture image frames of the surrounding environment of room 800. The images are processed according to the technology disclosed herein above under the Sensor Visual Data Generation and Processing section as follows:

Detect and Describe Features in Captured Images

Visual-inertial sensor 200 determines feature points 801, 811, 841, 851, 822, and so forth for the walls, corners and door 823 of room 800 from the information in the captured image frames. In some implementations, Shi-Tomasi feature detection is employed to determine the feature points 801, 811, 841, 851, 822 from the image frames. Features are assigned descriptors using ORB feature description. Optical flow techniques are used to determine 2D correspondences in the images, enabling matching together features in different images.

Map Feature Descriptors to a Hybrid Point Grid

The visual-inertial sensor 200 equipped robot 825 can build a descriptive point cloud 845 of the obstacles in room 800 enabling the robot 825 to circumnavigate obstacles and self-localize within room 800. Visual-inertial sensor 200 creates, updates, and refines descriptive point cloud 845 using feature descriptors determined for room features indicated by points 801, 811, 841, 851, 822 using the technology disclosed herein above under the Mapping sections. As depicted schematically in FIG. 8, descriptive point cloud 845 includes coordinates and feature descriptors corresponding to the feature points 801, 811, 841, 851, 822 of room 800. Visual-inertial sensor 200 prepares an occupancy map 855 by reprojecting feature points 801, 811, 841, 851, 822 onto a 2D layer corresponding to the floor of the room 800. In some implementations, second and possibly greater occupancy maps are created at differing heights of the robot 825, enabling the robot 825 to navigate about the room 800 without bumping its head into door soffits, or other obstacles above the floor.

Now with renewed reference to FIG. 6, which illustrates an example of an occupancy grid 600, the white portions indicate empty space—in other words space that has been determined by visual-inertial sensor 200 to be unoccupied. Portions in solid black indicate space that is occupied by an object or obstacle. The gray portions indicate space that the visual-inertial sensor 200 of robot 825 has not yet determined whether these spaces are occupied or empty.

The descriptive point cloud 845 and occupancy grid 855 comprise a hybrid point grid that enables the robot 825 to plan paths of travel through room 800, using the occupancy grid 855 and self-localize relative to features in the room 800 using the descriptive point cloud 845.

Using the Occupancy Grid and Path Planning

When the robot is activated in a previously mapped environment, the robot uses the technology described herein above in the Tracking sections to self-locate within the descriptive point cloud 845. The descriptive point cloud 845 and occupancy grid 855 comprise a hybrid point grid representation that is key to enabling robot action (i.e. moving on the floor) using passive sensors because the robot uses the occupancy grid 855 in order to plan a trajectory 856 from its current location to another location in the map using the technology described herein above in the Mapping sections. A person or entity can also command the robot to go to a specific point in the occupancy grid 855. While traveling, the robot uses the descriptive point cloud 845 to localize itself within the map as described herein above in the Tracking sections. The robot can update the map using the techniques described herein above in the Mapping sections. Further, some implementations equipped with active sensors (e.g. sonar, lidar) can update the map using information from these sensors as well.

VR/AR Implementations

In both AR and VR usage scenarios, the headset, goggles or other VR/AR presentation device employs the visual-inertial sensor 200 to track its own location, and in some applications recognizes the objects that it encounters. In order to track its location, the VR/AR presentation device needs to sense its own movement, which is accomplished using the visual-inertial sensor 200 technology described herein. Accordingly, the visual-inertial sensor 200 generates reliable inertial data so that the tracking and mapping pipeline that follows can accurately infer the VR/AR presentation device's location. FIG. 9 illustrates an example VR application in which one implementation can be embodied.

In FIG. 9, a user wears a VR/AR presentation device, headset 925. Headset 925 is equipped with a visual-inertial sensor 200 creates, updates, and refines descriptive point cloud 945 using feature descriptors determined for room features indicated by points 901, 911, 941, 951, 922 of room 900 and points 916 of objects within room 900 using the technology disclosed herein above under the Mapping sections. As depicted schematically in FIG. 9, descriptive point cloud 945 includes coordinates and feature descriptors corresponding to the feature points 901, 911, 941, 951, 922 of room 900 and points 916 of objects within room 900. Visual-inertial sensor 200 prepares hybrid point grid 955 of the room 900 mapping space by reprojecting feature points 901, 911, 941, 951, 922 and 916 onto 2D layers corresponding to various heights above (and including) the floor where feature points were found within the room 900. Accordingly, hybrid point grid 955 provides a mapping of the space in room 900 by stacked 2D layers indicating feature points corresponding to boundaries and objects in the room 900. In some implementations, free space 956 can be identified by the visual-inertial sensor 200 as available for display of VR presentation 915 and communicated to the VR presentation mechanisms of headset 925 enabling headset 925 to appropriately render VR presentation 915 to appear within space 956 to the wearer.

Headset 925 can be communicatively coupled to a source of content for presenting VR presentation 915 to the wearer. While depicted as a wireless connection to a hotspot coupled to a network gateway that further couples to a source of content for VR presentation 915, headset 925 can be coupled to presentation content using any of a wide variety of mechanisms, wired or wireless. Further, presentation content for rendering VR presentation 915 can be downloaded and stored on some headset 925 implementations.

The foregoing operational principles are easily applied to other common VR applications such as gaming and socially enabled experiences. In gaming for example, game play is conducted by users while wearing a VR/AR presentation device. The game is displayed to a user (“gamer”) by the VR/AR presentation device. The visual-inertial sensor 200 equipped VR/AR presentation device conducts orientation tracking, translation movement of the gamer that can be reflected to the game displayed by the VR/AR presentation device, enabling the gamer to move freely within a certain area of surrounding space. A visual-inertial sensor 200 equipped VR/AR presentation device provides mobile VR games with such “inside-out” e.g., integrated within the VR/AR presentation device, tracking thereby obviating the need for some kind of external position sensors such as are required by conventional VR/AR headsets. Yet further, if the gamer uses the VR/AR presentation device frequently in the same area, e.g., the gamer's living room, the visual-inertial sensor 200 can smartly re-use or update an existing (e.g., previously created by the visual-inertial sensor 200) map of this space to provide position tracking.

In socially enabled experiences for example, a celebrity/sports star/singer (creator) performs live in front of a stereo video camera that provides a live video stream as content to fans. Fans wearing a VR/AR presentation device equipped with the visual-inertial sensor 200 (attached or embedded) can consume this live video feed as a VR presentation. When the fans get excited/sad/happy, they move about just as they would during an in person live experience. The visual-inertial sensor 200 performs position tracking, and provides input to the VR/AR presentation device enabling adjusting the live video feed accordingly based on the position tracking. Accordingly, the fans and creator can “interact” with the help of the disclosed technology.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example AR application in which one implementation can be embodied. In FIG. 10, two users wear VR/AR presentation devices, headsets 1005, 1025. Headsets 1005, 1025 are equipped with a visual-inertial sensor 200 that creates, updates, and refines descriptive point cloud 1045 using feature descriptors determined for room features indicated by points 1001, 1011, 1041, 1051, 1022 of room 1000 using the technology disclosed herein above under the Mapping sections. As depicted schematically in FIG. 10, descriptive point cloud 1045 includes coordinates and feature descriptors corresponding to the feature points 1001, 1011, 1041, 1051, 1022 of room 1000. Visual-inertial sensor 200 prepares hybrid point grid 1055 of the room 1000 mapping space by reprojecting feature points 1001, 1011, 1041, 1051, 1022 of room 1000 onto 2D layers corresponding to various heights above (and including) the floor where feature points were found within the room 1000. Accordingly, hybrid point grid 1055 provides a mapping of the space in room 1000 by stacked 2D layers indicating feature points corresponding to boundaries and objects in the room 1000. In some implementations, objects 1056 corresponding to the wearers can be identified by the visual-inertial sensor 200 of the other wearer and reflected in hybrid point grid 1055. Further, free space between the objects 1056 corresponding to the wearers is made available for display of AR presentation 1015, in this case a virtualized rendering of a project schedule that the wearers are discussing during a business meeting, and communicated to the VR/AR presentation mechanisms of headsets 1005, 1025, enabling the headsets 1005, 1025 to appropriately render AR presentation 1015 to appear within space between objects 1056 corresponding to the wearers.

Headsets 1005, 1025 can be communicatively coupled to a source of content for presenting AR presentation 1015 to the wearer(s). While depicted as a wireless connection to a hotspot coupled to a network gateway that further couples to a source of content for AR presentation 1015, headsets 1005, 1025 can be coupled to presentation content using any of a wide variety of mechanisms, wired or wireless. Further, presentation content for rendering AR presentation 1015 can be downloaded and stored on some headsets 1005, 1025 implementations.

The foregoing operational principles are easily applied to other common AR applications such as gaming, socially enabled experiences and industrial applications. Like VR gaming, in AR gaming, game play is conducted by users while wearing a VR/AR presentation device. Gamers can move freely about the room(s) while the visual-inertial sensor 200 equipped VR/AR presentation device tracks the gamer's position. The VR presentation device manages positioning virtual things in the real world environment because of the accurate mapping of the real world environment provided by the visual-inertial sensor 200. Accordingly, the AR gamer can participate in virtual battles in their own living room, accouter their kitchen with virtual overlays of 18^(th) century kitchen items and so forth. Each virtual item can be positioned accurately and realistically into the gamer's real world using the position and localization information provided by the virtual-inertial sensor 200.

In socially enabled experiences for example, video chat applications for VR can enable a user to conduct a video chat with their best friend Tom, and a virtual Tom (displayed using an AR goggles, VR headset, projected by robot or other presentation rendering devices) appears in a position of the user's house. The user can walk around virtual Tom, change the presentation—making him larger or smaller or even changing the rendering altogether clothing him in a hat and suit typically worn by Napoleon.

Many other applications of virtual-inertial sensor 200 equipped VR/AR presentation devices exist. Virtual shopping trips, remote real estate showings, bicycle rides captured and replayed during indoor cycling sessions, virtual flight instruction, indoor/outdoor position tracking for hikes, bike rides, motorcycle travel and so forth.

In each of the scenarios listed above, the VR/AR presentation device utilizes the technology disclosed herein in order to track its own location and to recognize the objects that it encounters. Also, since the VR/AR applications include many complex tasks, each with real-time constraints, it is beneficial that the sensing be done rapidly to accelerate the perception pipeline. In implementations, this can be achieved by offloading some computation from the main processor to the visual-inertial sensor 200. In addition, since many VR/AR presentation devices can be wearable—or at least portable—the VR/AR presentation device carries limited storage capacity battery, energy consumption is a design point. In implementations, some computational tasks are off loaded from the main processor to the visual-inertial sensor 200 to reduce power consumption, thereby enabling implementations to achieve overall energy efficiency. Cost is an issue in VR/AR applications, since lowering the cost of the VR/AR presentation device makes VR/AR affordable to more customers. Hence cost can be another factor for sensor and guidance system design. In implementations, one low-cost grayscale sensor is used for localization tasks, and one colored sensor for recognition tasks. This design point enables these implementations to significantly reduce the cost over a stereo colored sensor designs without sacrificing performance.

Processes

FIG. 11 is a representative method 1100 of guiding a mobile device using information from a camera with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU). Flowchart 1100 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 11. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this flowchart is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as system overview, tracking, mapping, robot implementation, VR/AR implementation, etc.

FIG. 11 includes process 1100 that begins at action 1110, where image sets from a visual sensor are buffered. In some implementations, image sets are received from a visual sensor comprising at least one RGB sensing capable camera and from at least one other grayscale camera. The RGB camera(s) and grayscale camera(s) can be disposed at a distance relative to one another to form a region in which the fields of view at least partially overlap, thereby providing stereoscopic imaging capability. The visual sensor is disposed on a mobile platform, such as a robot, autonomous vehicle, or other autonomous or guided mobile platform.

Process 1100 continues at action 1120 where inertial measurements from a multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) capable of providing measurement of at least acceleration are buffered. The inertial measuring unit can be collocated with the visual sensor or can be disposed at an offset thereto.

At action 1130, the sets of image data are received at a visual inertial control unit.

At action 1140, the sets of sensor data from the multi-axis IMU are received at a visual inertial control unit.

At action 1150, the inertial data received is timestamped. The time stamping can be performed by an inertial measurement engine.

At action 1160, inertial readouts in the timestamped inertial data are corrected for bias.

At action 1170, the inertial readouts are scaled using a stored scale factor the corrected inertial data.

At action 1180, the scaled inertial data are corrected for misalignment in the IMU to form localization data.

At action 1190, imaging undistortion is performed on the sets of image data.

At action 1195, the localization data and the undistorted sets of image data are provided across a communications interface to a host controlling a mobile platform.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including memory and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

FIG. 12 is a representative method 1200 of updating a position of a mobile unit that includes a camera with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU). Flowchart 1200 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 12. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this flowchart is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as system overview, tracking, mapping, robot implementation, VR/AR implementation, etc.

FIG. 12 includes process 1200 that begins at action 1210, where a location of the mobile unit and perspective, including view direction, of the camera, referred to collectively as an initial pose is received. In some implementations, initial pose representations include coordinate e.g., points (x, y, z) mapped to a coordinate system of a visual-inertial sensor disposed on a mobile platform, such as a robot, autonomous vehicle, or other autonomous or guided mobile platform.

Process 1200 continues at action 1220 where while waiting for a new frame, between successive camera frames, the initial pose is updated using inertial data from the multi-axis IMU, to generate a propagated pose.

At action 1230, drift between the propagated pose, based on the inertial data, and an actual perspective of a new pose, is corrected using the new frame captured by the camera. This action can include a number of actions as well:

At action 1240, using the propagated pose, an overlap between the successive camera frames is estimated to reduce computation requirements, and the new frame is correlated with a previous frame by 2D comparison of the successive camera frames, beginning with the estimated overlap.

At action 1250, at least some feature points within a field of view of the propagated pose are retrieved from a 3D map using the propagated pose.

At action 1260, new features are extracted from the new frame.

At action 1270, the extracted new features are matched to the retrieved feature points based on (1) reuse of matched features from the previous frame and (2) matching of features in the new frame with reprojected feature positions from the 3D map onto a 2D view from a perspective of the propagated pose, producing a list of matching features.

At action 1280, a visually corrected pose is calculated using positions of the matching features in the list of matching feature to determine a perspective from which the new frame was viewed by the camera.

At action 1290, responsive to requests for location of the mobile unit and/or the perspective of the camera, data based on one or both of the propagated pose, based on the inertial data, and the visually corrected pose is provided.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including memory and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

FIG. 13 is a representative method 1300 of using a hybrid point grid to guide a mobile device that includes a camera with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU). Flowchart 1300 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 13. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this flowchart is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as system overview, tracking, mapping, robot implementation, VR/AR implementation, etc.

FIG. 13 includes process 1300 that begins at action 1310, where sets of image data are received. In some implementations, the sets of image data include feature points and pose information. The pose information includes a location of the mobile device and view of the camera that captured the image data. The sets of image data are referred to collectively as keyrigs.

Process 1300 continues at action 1320 where the keyrigs are reviewed to select keyrig content to include in a point cloud of features, based upon comparisons of keyrig content with content of other selected keyrigs subject to one or more intelligent thresholds. As used herein, intelligent thresholds includes a threshold that is adaptively adjusted based upon device movement, sensor readings, situational or environmental variables (e.g., low light, fog, bright light, and so forth) or combinations thereof.

At action 1330, for selected keyrigs, (a) new feature points in the keyrig are triangulated using feature points of keyrigs previously added to the point cloud of features to obtain feature points in a coordinate system of the device, and (b) coordinates of the feature points in the point cloud of features are aligned to a coordinate system having a z-axis aligned with gravity.

At action 1340, a multilayered hybrid point grid is created from the feature points selected for the point cloud of features, using at least one layer of a multilayered 2D occupancy grid by the following:

At action 1350, a 2D occupancy grid corresponding to one selected from a plurality of x-y layers covering the feature points in the point cloud of features is initialized.

At action 1360, at least one layer of the occupancy grid is populated with points from the point cloud of features within a height range using ray tracing from an observed location of a point in the keyrig aligned to a corresponding point in the occupancy grid and a location of a corresponding point reprojected on the layer of the occupancy grid.

At action 1370, cells along a ray between the aligned observed point and the corresponding point reprojected on the layer are found and the found cells are marked as empty.

At action 1380, responsive to receiving a command to travel to a location, the occupancy grid is used to plan a path of travel to a location commanded and contemporaneously the descriptive point cloud is used while traveling the planned path to avoid colliding with obstructions.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including memory and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

CONCLUSION AND ADDITIONAL IMPLEMENTATIONS

We describe a system and various implementations for guiding a mobile device using information from a camera with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU).

Some additional implementations and features include:

-   -   In some implementations at least some features are detected in         sets of images that have been undistorted and the detected         features are provided to a host via a communications interface.     -   In some implementations the features are detected using         Shi-Tomasi feature detection.     -   In some implementations feature descriptors are determined for         the detected features and the feature descriptors are provided         to a host via a communications interface.     -   In some implementations a bag of words description for an image         frame is generated for use in re-localization.     -   In some implementations feature correspondences between features         detected from successive images in the sets of images are         determined and provided to a host via a communications         interface.     -   In some implementations feature correspondences are determined         using optical flow.

Some particular implementations and features are described in the following discussion.

In one implementation, described is a system including a mobile platform controllable by a host and having disposed on it a visual sensor comprising at least one RGB sensing capable camera and at least one other grayscale camera disposed at a distance relative to one another to form a region in which the fields of view of the cameras at least partially overlap, thereby providing stereoscopic imaging capability; a multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) capable of providing measurement of at least acceleration; and a visual inertial control unit. The visual inertial control unit can include a first interface that couples to the visual sensor to receive sets of image data; a second interface that couples to the multi-axis IMU to receive accelerometer sensor data; a cache storage that stores the sets of image data; a single instruction-multiple data processing element having direct memory access to the cache storage; an inertial measurement engine that performs time stamping of inertial data received via the second interface, corrects the timestamped inertial data for bias, applies a stored scale factor to the corrected inertial data and corrects the scaled inertial data for misalignment in the IMU to form localization data; an imaging engine that performs imaging undistortion on the sets of image data; and a communications interface to provide the localization data and the undistorted sets of image data to a host controlling the mobile platform.

Also disclosed is an implementation including an apparatus that guides a mobile device using information from one or more cameras with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU). The apparatus can include a first interface that couples to the one or more cameras to receive sets of image data; a second interface that couples to the multi-axis IMU to receive accelerometer sensor data; a cache storage that stores the sets of image data; a single instruction-multiple data processing element having direct memory access to the cache storage; an inertial measurement engine that performs time stamping of inertial data received via the second interface, corrects the timestamped inertial data for bias, applies a stored scale factor to the corrected inertial data and corrects the scaled inertial data for misalignment in the IMU to form localization data; an imaging engine that performs imaging undistortion on the sets of image data; and a communications interface to provide the localization data and the undistorted sets of image data to a host controlling the mobile platform.

Further disclosed is an implementation including a non-transitory computer readable storage medium impressed with computer program instructions to guide a mobile device using information from a camera with distance calculation and multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU), the instructions, when executed on a processor, implement a method including: buffering image sets from a visual sensor that comprises at least one RGB sensing capable camera and from at least one other grayscale camera disposed at a distance relative to one another to form a region in which the fields of view at least partially overlap, thereby providing stereoscopic imaging capability. The method also includes buffering inertial measurements from a multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) capable of providing measurement of at least acceleration. The method further includes receiving at a visual inertial control unit the sets of image data and receiving at the visual inertial control unit sensor data from the multi-axis IMU. According to the method, the inertial data received is time stamped by an inertial measurement engine. Inertial readouts in the timestamped inertial data are corrected for bias. The inertial readouts are scaled using a stored scale factor the corrected inertial data. The scaled inertial data is corrected for misalignment in the IMU to form localization data. Imaging undistortion is performed on the sets of image data. The localization data and the undistorted sets of image data is provided across a communications interface to a host controlling a mobile platform.

Other implementations include methods including performing the actions of the system, non-transitory machine readable storage media storing program logic implementing such methods, substituents and components thereof, and devices incorporating any or combinations of the foregoing.

The terms and expressions employed herein are used as terms and expressions of description and not of limitation, and there is no intention, in the use of such terms and expressions, of excluding any equivalents of the features shown and described or portions thereof. In addition, having described certain implementations of the technology disclosed, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that other implementations incorporating the concepts disclosed herein can be used without departing from the spirit and scope of the technology disclosed. Accordingly, the described implementations are to be considered in all respects as only illustrative and not restrictive.

Advanced Imaging and Guidance

The following detailed description is made with reference to the figures. Sample implementations are described to illustrate the technology disclosed, not to limit its scope, which is defined by the claims. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize a variety of equivalent variations on the description that follows.

The discussion is organized as follows. First, an introduction describing some of the problems addressed by various implementations will be presented. Then, a high-level description of one implementation will be discussed at an architectural level. Next, the processes used by some implementations to efficiently process image and data from the auxiliary sensors are discussed. Lastly, the technology disclosed will be illustrated with reference to particular applications of (i) Warehouse robots and self-guided autonomous platforms, and (ii) Autonomous vehicles. The references to specific examples are intended to be illustrative of the approaches disclosed herein rather than limiting.

This document describes positional awareness techniques employed by an autonomous mobile unit by using visual sensory data from a multi-ocular system that provides a 360-degrees view. In one embodiment, the multi-ocular sensor includes four interfaces to couple with four cameras, each camera providing a field of view of at least 200 degrees. The four cameras are configured into two back-to-back pairs, whereby each pair of cameras can be disposed of horizontally or vertically with respect to the other pair of cameras. As each camera have a field of view of at least 200 degrees, each back-to-back pair of cameras provide a 360-degrees view. Therefore two back-to-back pairs of cameras will provide two 360-degrees views. By comparing these two 360-degrees views, the relative depth information of objects around the autonomous mobile unit can be obtained in the form of a disparity map, which encodes the difference in horizontal coordinates of corresponding image points. The values in this disparity map are inversely proportional to the scene depth at the corresponding pixel location. As used herein, the term “quadocular” will be used to describe any multi-ocular system that includes four cameras, each providing a field of view of at least 200 degrees. In other embodiments, the multi-ocular sensor may include more than one camera, each camera providing a field of view of more than 180 degrees.

When an autonomous mobile unit moves, images taken before and after the movement can be analyzed to estimate the new position of the unit. This process is known as visual odometry. Therefore, the pair of 360-degrees frames can be compared by extracting and matching key features in the frames. One main limitation of visual odometry is the inaccurate estimation of the absolute depth scale or magnitude of the movement of the mobile unit. Indeed, even if camera pose estimation and scene reconstruction are carried out accurately, the error in the estimated depth of key features by stereo matching grows quadratically with depth or distance of the key features. In other words, the inaccuracy of the depth of key features in the far range is much higher that of the near range. While the depth accuracy in the far range is unusably bad, the depth accuracy in the near range is significant. Some approaches suggest solving the issue via object detection by matching the scene with a pre-defined set of 3D models, so to recover the initial depth scale based on the estimated object size, which nevertheless fails in the absence of known shapes in the scene.

Data from one or more auxiliary sensors can be used to rectify the depth inaccuracy. In one embodiment, the auxiliary sensor can be a multi-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU), which measures and reports the mobile unit's linear acceleration using one or more accelerometers and rotational rate using one or more gyroscopes. In one embodiment, the auxiliary sensor can be a wheel odometry unit (WOU), which measures and reports the mobile unit's displacement from the encoder readings of the mobile unit's wheels. In one embodiment, the auxiliary sensor can be a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, which provides the autonomous mobile unit's geolocation at a given time. In one embodiment, the mobile unit can have two auxiliary sensors, an IMU and a WOU. In one embodiment, the mobile unit can have an IMU and a GPS receiver as its two auxiliary sensors. In one embodiment, the mobile unit can have three auxiliary sensors, an IMU, a GPS receiver and a WOU.

The cameras or the imaging sensors in the multi-ocular system can be RGB or grayscale. Using low-end imaging sensors to construct a sensor, e.g., cameras having a resolution of 640×480, obviates the cost of high-end image sensors. Wider field of view can be achieved by ultra wide-angle fisheye lenses that produce strong visual distortion intended to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image.

Examples of robot applications that benefit from employing positional awareness techniques such as described herein includes caregiver and service robots (traveling on a ground plane), a robot being commanded to carry objects around the environment (a warehouse robot, a delivery robot), a telepresence robot moving around a remote environment automatically, a robot butler that follows a person around, etc.

The positional awareness techniques described herein can also be used in autonomous vehicles and driver assistance systems that enhance the awareness and safety of human drivers, such as adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning and lane change assistant.

In each of the scenarios listed above, the autonomous mobile unit utilizes the techniques described herein to track its location and to recognize the objects that it encounters. Also, since the autonomous mobile unit performs many complex tasks, each with real-time constraints, it is beneficial that the sensing is done rapidly to accelerate the perception pipeline. For the autonomous mobile unit to overcome the computational burden imposed by this processing, implementations offload some computation with regards to image processing from the main processor to an imaging component or a digital signal processor. In addition, since it is a mobile unit with limited battery, energy consumption is a major challenge. Accordingly, some implementations offload some computational tasks from the main processor to a low-power sensor module, thereby enabling implementations to achieve overall energy efficiency.

Examples of systems, apparatus, and methods according to the disclosed implementations are described in a warehouse robot guidance context and an autonomous vehicle context. In other instances, the technology disclosed can be applied to, navigation, telecommunications systems, financial systems, security trading, banking, business intelligence, marketing, mining, energy, etc. and using sonar, audio, GPS and LIDAR data. Other services are possible, such that the following examples should not be taken as definitive or limiting either in scope, context, or setting.

The technology disclosed relates to improving utilization of computing resources such as computational power and memory use during processing of image and data from auxiliary sensors inside a single input-multiple data (SIMD) architecture. The technology disclosed can be implemented in the context of any computer-implemented system including a reduced instruction set (RISC) system, emulated hardware environment, or the like. Moreover, this technology can be implemented using two or more separate and distinct computer-implemented systems that cooperate and communicate with one another. This technology can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a process, a method, an apparatus, a system, a device, a computer readable medium such as a computer readable storage medium that stores computer readable instructions or computer program code, or as a computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having a computer readable program code embodied therein.

The technology disclosed can be implemented in the context of any computer-implemented system like a NEON ARM VFP9-S processor, an ARM core processor, or a compatible processor implementation.

In addition, the technology disclosed can be implemented using a variety of different imaging sensors and technologies, including RGB, grayscale, IR, sonar, LIDAR or combinations thereof.

System Overview

Control Unit for the Multi-Ocular-Auxiliary Sensor

FIG. 14 illustrates an example of a Control Unit for a multi-ocular-auxiliary sensor in block diagram format. Control Unit 1400 in FIG. 14 can be coupled to an external memory 1410, a flash memory (not shown in FIG. 14 for clarity sake), and one or more persistent storages such as HDDs, optical drives or the like (also not shown in FIG. 14 for clarity sake). Control Unit 1400 includes a memory cache 1408, a USB I/O port 1402, a Camera Serial Interface (CSI) I/O port 1416 that facilitates directly receiving images from four cameras, a multi-ocular controller 1417, imaging component 1418, an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I²C) I/O ports 1404, a single instruction multiple-data (SIMD) capable processor 1406, and a feature buffer 1420. The components in the Control Unit 1400 are intercoupled by a local bus 1407. In an embodiment, the external memory 1410 is a 64-bit double data rate (DDR) random access memory (RAM). In an embodiment, the SIMD capable processor 1406 is implemented as a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture. In an embodiment, the SIMD capable processor 1406 is implemented as a NEON ARM VFP9-S. An inertial component 1412, an odometry component 1413, and a geolocation component 1414 reside within the memory cache 1408. In other embodiments, more than one camera can be connected to the Control Unit 1400 through the Camera Serial Interface (CSI) I/O port 1416.

FIG. 15 illustrates an example of a multi-ocular controller 1417 in FIG. 14. The multi-ocular controller 1417 includes a multi-ocular controller engine 1510 that implements a time stamping processor 1502, an image synchronizer processor 1504, an image stitching processor 1506, and an image rectification processor 1508. The image synchronizer processor 1504 sends a synchronization signal to the cameras connected through the CSI I/O port 1416 to acquire images in time frames relative to one another from the cameras. The time stamping processor 1502 creates time stamps for the images captured by the cameras, thereby maintaining a set of synchronized images in which images captured are tagged with a current timestamp. In one embodiment, the time stamping processor 1502 may have its own time block. In another embodiment, the time stamping processor 1502 may synchs with the global real-time clock in the control unit 1400. In one embodiment, the image stitching processor 1506 combines the synchronized, time-stamped images with overlapping fields of view to produce a seamless 360-degrees view. In another embodiment, the image rectification processor 1508 determines a rectification transformation of each synchronized, time-stamped image plane such that pairs of conjugate epipolar lines become collinear and parallel to one of the image axes. Therefore, the images with overlapping fields of view are rectified to a common image plane, resulting in a 360-degrees view. The multi-ocular controller 1417 can be implemented as a field programmable gate array (FPGA).

FIG. 16 illustrates an example of an imaging component 1418 in FIG. 14. An Imaging component 1418 includes a frame cache 1602, an artifact removal processor 1603, an image undistortion processor 1604, a Shi-Tomasi or equivalent feature detection processor 1606, a feature undistortion processor 1608, a feature description processor 1610, and an optical flow feature correspondence processor 1612 under control of an Imaging Engine 1614.

The stitched or rectified image from the multi-ocular controller 1417 is directly processed by the imaging component 1418 to extract useful corner features and generates a descriptor for each feature. Imaging engine 214 can be implemented as a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The imaging component 1418 directly processes the incoming images without involving the SIMD processor 1406 or storing the image data in the cache 1408.

After the incoming images are analyzed, and key features are extracted by the imaging component 1418, a feature buffer 1420 stores the extracted features. The feature buffer 1420 comprises of bank 1 1422, bank 2 1424 and a feature buffer controller 1426. FIG. 17 illustrates a method of operation 1700 of the feature buffer 1420. The imaging component 1418 can write data to either bank 1 (step 1702) or bank 2 (step 1714), but not concurrently. If the imaging component 1418 is currently writing data to bank 1 and bank 1 becomes full (step 1704), the feature buffer controller 1426 notifies the SIMD processor 1406 (step 1706) that bank 1 is full. Meanwhile, the imaging component 1418 starts writing data to bank 2 (step 1714). The SIMD processor locks bank 1 (step 1708), copies the data in bank 1 to the LO cache available inside the SIMD processor (step 1710), and releases bank 1 (step 1712). If bank 2 becomes full (step 1716), the feature buffer controller 1426 notifies the SIMD processor 1406 about the filled bank 2 (step 1718), and the imaging component 1418 starts writing data to bank 1 (step 1702). The SIMD processor locks bank 2 (step 1720), copies the data in bank 2 to the LO cache available inside the SIMD processor (step 1722), and releases bank 2 (step 1724). Of course, other implementations in which additional banks are employed will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

FIG. 18 illustrates an example of an inertial component 1412 in FIG. 14. The Inertial component 1412 includes an Inertial Measurement engine 1802 that implements a time stamping processor 1804 that time stamps sets of inertial data from an inertial sensor (not shown in FIG. 1 for clarity sake), a bias correction processor 1806 that corrects data readout from the timestamped inertial data, a scale correction processor 1808 that applies stored scale factor information to the corrected inertial data, a misalignment correction processor 1810 that corrects misalignments of sensory elements of the inertial measurement sensor, and an IMU-Image coordinate transformation processor 1812 that computes transformations describing differences between a frame of reference of the inertial data and a frame of reference of the image data.

FIG. 19 illustrates an example of an odometry component 1413 in FIG. 14. The odometry component 1413 includes a Wheel Odometry Unit engine 1902 that implements a time stamping processor 1904 that time stamps sets of odometry data from mobile unit's rotary encoder (not shown in FIG. 14 for clarity sake), a slippage adjuster 1906 that corrects data readout from the timestamped odometry data, and a scale correction processor 1908 that applies stored scale factor information to the corrected odometry data. Implementations can detect variations in current demand of one or more motors driving a mobile platform and compare with data from the mobile unit's rotary encoder to determine whether a slippage state exists. When a slippage state is detected, the slippage adjuster 1906 and the scale correction processor 1908 can take action to remedy the slippage. Actions can include marking the odometry data as unreliable, applying a correction factor to the odometry data based upon a duration of slippage state. Other actions can be applied either instead of or in addition to the foregoing as apparent to a person skilled in the art.

FIG. 20 illustrates an example of a geolocation component 1414 in FIG. 14. The geolocation component 1414 includes a geolocation engine 2002 that implements a time stamping processor 2004 that time stamps sets of geolocation data from the autonomous mobile unit's GPS receiver (not shown in FIG. 14 for clarity sake), and a coordinate transformation processor 2006 that computes transformations. The GPS receiver may receive geolocation of the autonomous mobile unit in North-East down (NED) coordinate format or Earth-Centered, Earth-Fixed (ECEF) format. The coordinate transformation processor 2006 has the capability of translating any one of the geolocation coordinate formats of the GPS receiver to the one used by the autonomous mobile unit and vice versa.

Quadocular-Auxiliary Sensor

FIG. 21 illustrates an example of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor 2100 for determining positional information where the auxiliary sensors are an inertial measurement unit and a GPS receiver. The quadocular-auxiliary sensor 2100 includes four cameras. The four cameras are configured into two back-to-back pairs (camera 1 2102 and camera 2 2104, camera 3 2106 and camera 4 2108) and each pair of cameras is placed horizontally with respect to the other. The two front facing cameras, camera 1 2102 and camera 3 2106, are used to obtain two differing stereoscopic views on a scene in front of the autonomous mobile unit. Likewise, the two back facing cameras, camera 2 2104 and camera 4 2108, are used to obtain two differing stereoscopic views on a scene at the back of the autonomous mobile unit. The quadocular-auxiliary sensor 2100 further includes an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) 2110, a GPS receiver 2112, and a Control Unit (CU) 1400. The Control Unit 1400 has a USB interface to provide output to a host. Images from cameras 2102, 2104, 2106, 2108 are used for agent localization that extracts features from images and to provide raw information for deep learning based tasks, including object recognition, object tracking, image captioning, and the like.

An IMU 2110 provides raw sensor data for agent localization pipeline, which consumes IMU data at a high frequency at least 200 Hz to generate agent positional information in real-time. In an implementation, the localization pipeline combines information from IMU 2110 which runs at relatively high frequency to provide frequent updates of less accurate information, and cameras 2102, 2104, 2106, 2108 which run at relatively lower frequency, 30 Hz, to provide more accurate information with less frequency.

A GPS provider 2112 provides a global position estimate at 10 Hz. While GPS is a relatively accurate localization sensor, its update rate is too slow to provide real-time updates. IMU 2110 provides a faster update with less accurate results. The IMU 2110 propagates the autonomous mobile unit's position every 5 ms, but the error accumulates as time progresses. Therefore, in every 100 ms, a GPS update is received which helps correct the IMU error. Data from the GPS receiver implementations has an accuracy of about one meter. Furthermore, the GPS signal can experience multipath problems, meaning that the signal may bounce off buildings and introduce more noise. A GPS receiver also benefits from an unobstructed view of the sky and thus is less effective in closed environments.

The Control Unit 1400 controls the sensors (IMU 2110, GPS receiver 2112 and cameras 2102, 2104, 2106, 2108), time stamping sensor data from the sensors, performs pre-computation in order to accelerate the localization pipeline, and packages raw data for sending over USB 1402 to a host.

The USB interface 1402 enables the quadocular-auxiliary sensor 2100 to interact with a host. The host (not shown in FIG. 21 for clarity sake) can be a mobile device or a desktop/laptop computer, specialized machine controller, automobile control module, robot controller or the like, that consumes the data generated by the quadocular-auxiliary sensor 2100. In various implementations, the host can perform additional computations to achieve agent localization and deep learning tasks. Implementations that perform data pre-processing on low-power CU 1400 relieve the host processor (which has a much higher power consumption compared to low-power CU) from performing these tasks. As a result, such implementations achieve increased energy efficiency.

FIG. 22 illustrates an example of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor 2200 where a wheel odometry unit (WOU) 2212 is used for determining positional information instead of GPS receiver. A WOU 2212 provides raw sensor data for agent localization pipeline from the autonomous mobile unit's wheel rotary encoder to generate agent positional information in real-time.

FIG. 23 illustrates an example of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor 2300 combined with an inertial measurement unit 2110, a GPS receiver 2112 and a wheel odometry unit 2212. In this embodiment, sensor data from the inertial measurement unit 2110, the GPS receiver 2112 and the wheel odometry unit 2212 are used to calibrate positional data from the camera to determine the position of the autonomous mobile unit on the global map.

Implementations described herein can be utilized for determining positional information of the mobile unit.

Sensor Visual Data Generation and Processing

Artifact Removal:

Dust, dirt or scratches on the camera lenses of the quadocular-auxiliary sensor blocks incoming light before it reaches the visual sensors, and appears as dark spots in images. The presence of these artifacts will result in an image different than the scene in front of the cameras, and affect detection of key features. Image correction of artifacts by artifact removal processor 1603 can be used to recreate missing pixel data. Various algorithms used for image correction by artifact removal processor 1603 will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

Image Undistortion:

The image undistortion processor 1604 corrects distortion in the image data in the captured frames. The image distortion is generally referred to an optical aberration that deforms and bends physically straight lines and makes them appear curvy in images. Optical distortion occurs as a result of optical design. To achieve reliable computer vision results, image undistortion processor 1604 can undistort the image before further processing is performed. This can be achieved by using a lookup table of the size of the input image and performing a remapping operation to undistort the whole image.

Feature Undistortion:

In cases when the remaining portions of the processing pipeline do not require the whole image, but only the feature points within the image, the feature undistortion processor 1608 perform a feature undistortion operation on the CU. In detail, this operation runs after the feature extraction stage and undistorts each feature point.

Feature Detection and Description:

The processor feature detection engine 1606 performs feature detection upon image frames using Shi-Tomasi. Features are “interesting” parts of an image. The Shi-Tomasi feature detection includes methods that aim at computing abstractions of image information and making local decisions at every image point whether there is an image feature of a given type at that point or not. The resulting features will be subsets of the image domain, often in the form of isolated points. Some implementations perform the feature detection on the CU 1400 to relieve the host from performing such tasks, and to accelerate the feature detection process. A type of feature can be (A) two small Eigen values: feature is not interesting; (B) one small, one big value: feature is likely an edge; (C) two big values: feature is likely a corner; and (D) other type of features. Accordingly, in an implementation, processing includes: (a) action 1: calculate Eigen value of the intensity value of each pixel and its surrounding pixels, and determine (i) whether the feature is of interest; and (ii) for features of interest, a type of feature; and (b) action 2: refine by applying non-maximum suppression, applying spatial binning, applying heuristics or applying other types of refinement.

The feature description engine 1610 performs feature description on detected features. The feature description includes methods to identify each detected points in an image uniquely. Feature description can be used to compare and match feature points between different images. Some implementations perform the feature description on the CU 1400 to relieve the host from performing such tasks, and to accelerate the feature description process.

One implementation of feature description engine 1610 uses a SIMD-accelerated ORB descriptor to describe features. The description of a feature can be used for matching purposes and describing a feature's uniqueness. The ORB descriptor approach was selected for its relative rotational invariance and immunity to Gaussian image noise. One example of an ORB feature detector and binary descriptor can be found at “ORB feature detector and binary descriptor”, http:slash-slashscikit-image.org/docs/dev/auto_examples/plot_orbdothtml (last accessed Aug. 17, 2016). For further information on ORB Descriptor, reference may be had to Ethan Rublee, et al., “ORB: an efficient alternative to SIFT or SURF”, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.

In some implementations, the feature detection engine 1606 and the feature description engine 1610 can be combined, as demonstrated in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). A convolution neural network is a type of deep neural network that is widely used in object recognition tasks. A general CNN evaluation pipeline usually consists of the following layers: (i) the convolution layer uses different filters to extract different features from the input image with each filter containing a set of “learnable” parameters that will be derived after the training stage; (ii) the activation layer decides whether to activate the target neuron or not; (iii) the pooling layer reduces the spatial size of the representation to reduce the number of parameters and consequently the computation in the network; and (iv) the fully connected layer connects all neurons to all activations in the previous layer. CNNs have proven very useful in areas such as feature recognition and classification in images from visual sensors. CNNs have managed to identify faces, objects and traffic signs for autonomous robots and vehicles. CNNs are data centric and require heavy computation. In the last few years, increases in available storage and computation capabilities have enabled CNNs to achieve success in supervised perception tasks of key features in images from visual sensors. After training for days or even weeks on a large data set, a CNN can be capable of in real-time perception of key features in images. For example, CNNs have achieved top results with ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) dataset, which contains 1-2 million images in over 1000 categories.

In autonomous vehicles, CNNs can be used to perform lane and vehicle detection while running at frame rates required for a real-time system. A labeled data set is required to represent all possible driving environments (rain, snow, night, day, etc.), and scenarios (pedestrian crossing the road, a car in front, mailbox by the side of the road, etc.).

Various versions of CNNs cam be used to implement the technology disclosed herein, e.g. AlexNet, Overfeat CNN, R-CNN, etc.

2D Feature Correspondence Generation:

The optical flow feature correspondence processor 1612 performs 2D feature correspondence generation for the features. The feature correspondence computation is used to identify the feature points that appear in both the left and the right cameras. Once feature correspondence is identified for any two feature points, triangulation can be applied to the feature points to derive the depth of the point in space. This depth information is employed by processes later in the localization pipeline. Some implementations perform the feature correspondence generation on the CU 1400 to relieve the host from performing such tasks, and to accelerate the feature correspondence generation.

One optical flow feature correspondence processor 1612 implementation employs optical flow methods to calculate the motion between two image frames, taken at times t and t+Δt at each voxel position. One such method, called a differential method, is based on local Taylor series approximations of the image signal, using partial derivatives with respect to the spatial and temporal coordinates. Accordingly, in an implementation, processing includes: (a) input: last image, current image, a list of detected feature locations from the last image; (b) output: a list of locations of the last image's detected features' in the current image; (c) assumption: brightness consistency, image changes by and only by motion; (d) action 1: predict the output locations by either just assuming there is no motion so the current locations are the same as last frame's feature locations, OR use information retrieved from the auxiliary sensors to predict the locations; and (e) action 2: refine the pixel coordinate for each feature point by searching around the predicted location, matching patches, and using matching score to determine the refined position. Accordingly, the technology disclosed can provide implementations with the ability to gain increased performance by using information from the auxiliary to narrow the search and save time.

Sensor Data Generation and Processing for the Inertial Measurement Unit

In an embodiment, IMU raw data is corrected on the CU 1400, thereby enabling implementations that do not require extra processing from the host processor, therefore accelerating the sensor pre-processing pipeline.

Time Stamping:

The time stamping processor 1804 time stamps each set of inertial measurement data that the Control Unit 1400 receives from the IMU sensor 2110 data, in order to assure that the quadocular-auxiliary sensors 2100, 2200 and 2300 maintain a temporally accurate stream of sensor data. Such rigorous attention to maintaining the integrity of the sensor data stream enables implementations to provide agent localization that works reliably. Time-stamping raw data by the quadocular-auxiliary sensor obviates the need for complex synchronization tasks.

Bias Correction:

The bias correction processor 1806 corrects IMU data readout from the timestamped inertial data. Due to manufacturing imperfections, IMU sensors usually have bias problems such that its measurements contain errors. A bias error, if not removed from the measurement, is integrated twice as part of the mechanization process. In this case, a constant bias (error) in acceleration becomes a linear error in velocity and a quadratic error in position. A constant bias in attitude rate (gyro) becomes a quadratic error in velocity and a cubic error in position. The bias can be derived from the offline factory sensor calibration stage. This calibration information in CU 1400 to perform bias correction task on CU 1400.

Scale Correction:

The scale correction processor 1808 applies stored scale factor information to the corrected inertial data. Scale factor error is the relation between input and output. If the input is 100%, the expected output is 100%. The actual output is the result of a linear effect, where the output is proportional to the input but scaled. For example, if the input is 10 m/s2, but there is a 2% scale factor error, the output measurement is 10.2 m/s2. The scale factor can be derived from the offline factory sensor calibration stage. This calibration information in CU 1400 to perform scale correction task on CU 1400.

Misalignment Correction:

The mis-alignment correction processor 1810 corrects misalignments of sensory elements of the inertial measurement sensor. There is a 3-axis gyroscope and a 3-axis accelerometer mounted orthogonal to each other. The mountings, however, have errors and so are not perfectly at 90 degrees. This leads to a correlation between sensors. For example, assume one axis is pointed perfectly up and the IMU is level. The accelerometer on this axis is measuring gravity. If the other two axes were perfectly orthogonal, they do not measure any of the effect of gravity. If there is a non-orthogonality, the other axes also measure gravity, leading to a correlation in the measurements. The effect of non-orthogonality occurs within sensor sets (between accelerometers or gyroscopes), between sensor sets or between the sensor sets and the enclosure (package misalignment). Careful manufacturing, as well as factory calibration, can help minimize this error source. Continuous estimation and correction during system operation is also an approach used to minimize this effect. Package misalignment (between the IMU 2110 and the enclosure) can be removed by performing a bore-sighting estimation to determine the offset between the IMU 2110 measurement frame and the sensor (objective) frame. The misalignment numbers can be derived from the offline factory sensor calibration stage. This calibration information in CU 1400 to perform misalignment correction task on CU 1400.

IMU-Camera Coordinate Transformation:

In some implementations, the IMU 2110 and the cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108 do not reside at the same physical location; there is a distance between the IMU 2110 and the cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108. Accordingly, in order to enable later processes in the localization pipeline to treat the IMU 2110 and the cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108 as being co-located, on implementation determines a transformation matrix between the IMU 2110 and the cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108, which can be achieved from an offline production or post-production calibration stage. In CU 1400, this transformation matrix is stored locally, and applied to the IMU data. This technique enables later processes to be able to treat the IMU 2110 and the cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108 to be co-located

Sensor Data Generation and Processing for the Wheel Odometry Unit

In an embodiment, WOU raw data is corrected on the CU 1400, thereby enabling implementations that do not require extra processing from the host processor, therefore accelerating the sensor pre-processing pipeline.

Time Stamping:

The time stamping processor 1904 time stamps each set of odometry measurement data that the Control Unit 1400 receives from the WOU sensor 2212 data, in order to assure that the quadocular-auxiliary sensors 2100, 2200 and 2300 maintain a temporally accurate stream of sensor data. Time-stamping raw data by the quadocular-auxiliary sensor obviates the need for complex synchronization tasks.

Slippage Adjuster:

When driving over low-traction terrain, deformable terrain, steep hills, or during collisions with obstacles, the position of the quadocular-auxiliary sensor with WOU as an auxiliary unit can quickly accumulate large errors due to wheel slippage. With inaccurate odometry data, the autonomous mobile unit's final position can be overestimated. The slippage adjuster 1906 corrects slippage related inaccuracy from the timestamped odometry data.

Scale Correction:

The scale correction processor 1908 applies stored scale factor information to the corrected odometry data. Scale factor error is the relation between input and output. If the input is 100%, the expected output is 100%. The actual output is the result of a linear effect, where the output is proportional to the input but scaled. For example, if the input is 1 cm, but there is a 5% scale factor error, the output measurement is 1.05 cm. The scale factor can be derived from the offline factory sensor calibration stage. This calibration information in CU 1400 to perform scale correction task on CU 1400.

Sensor Data Generation and Processing for the Global Positioning System Receiver

In an embodiment, geolocation raw data is corrected on the CU 1400, thereby enabling implementations that do not require extra processing from the host processor, therefore accelerating the sensor pre-processing pipeline.

Time Stamping:

The time stamping processor 2004 time stamps each set of geolocation data that the Control Unit 1400 receives from the GPS receiver 2112, in order to assure that the quadocular-auxiliary sensors 2100, 2200 and 2300 maintain a temporally accurate stream of sensor data. Time-stamping raw data by the quadocular-auxiliary sensor obviates the need for complex synchronization tasks.

Coordinate Transformation:

The GPS receiver may receive geolocation of the autonomous mobile unit in North-East down (NED) coordinate format or Earth-Centered, Earth-Fixed (ECEF) coordinate format. The coordinate transformation processor 2006 has the capability of translating any one of the geolocation coordinate system formats of the GPS receiver to the one used by the autonomous mobile unit and vice versa.

Referring now to FIG. 24, which shows a simplified block diagram of a quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400 which can be used to implement quadocular-auxiliary sensors 2100, 2200 and 2300. Quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400 includes a processor 2432, a memory 2434, an inertial measurement unit (IMU) 2110, a wheel odometry unit (WOU) 2212, a global positioning system (GPS) receiver 2112, cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108, and a communications interface 2442. One or more additional I/O features 2436 are included to address implementation specific needs, such as a visual presentation interface 2478, an audio presentation interface 2479, sensor(s) for detecting tactile input (e.g., keyboards, keypads, touchpads, mouse, trackball, joystick and the like) 2480, and non-tactile input (e.g., microphone(s), sonar sensors and the like) 2482. Memory 2434 can be used to store instructions to be executed by processor 2432 as well as input and/or output data associated with execution of the instructions. In particular, memory 2434 contains instructions, conceptually illustrated as a group of modules described in greater detail below, that control the operation of processor 2432 and its interaction with the other hardware components. An operating system directs the execution of low-level, basic system functions such as memory allocation, file management and operation of mass storage devices. The operating system may be or include a variety of operating systems such as Microsoft WINDOWS™ operating system, the Unix™ operating system, the Linux™ operating system, the Xenix™ operating system, the IBM AIX™ operating system, the Hewlett Packard UX™ operating system, the Novell NETWARE™ operating system, the Sun Microsystems SOLARIS™ operating system, the OS/2™ operating system, the BeOS™ operating system, the MACINTOSH™ operating system, the APACHE™ operating system, an OPENACTION™ operating system, iOS™, Android or other mobile operating systems, or another operating system of platform.

The computing environment may also include other removable/non-removable, volatile/nonvolatile computer storage media. For example, a hard disk drive may read or write to non-removable, nonvolatile magnetic media. A magnetic disk drive may read from or write to a removable, nonvolatile magnetic disk, and an optical disk drive may read from or write to a removable, nonvolatile optical disk such as a CD-ROM or other optical media. Other removable/non-removable, volatile/nonvolatile computer storage media that can be used in the exemplary operating environment include, but are not limited to, magnetic tape cassettes, flash memory cards, digital versatile disks, digital video tape, solid state RAM, solid state ROM, and the like. The storage media are typically connected to the system bus through a removable or non-removable memory interface.

In an embodiment, the processor 2432 is a NEON ARM processor implementing a single input-multiple data (SIMD) architecture as a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture. Depending on implementation, however, processor 2432 can alternatively be a realized using a specific purpose microcontroller, peripheral integrated circuit element, a CSIC (customer-specific integrated circuit), an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit), a logic circuit, a digital signal processor, a programmable logic device such as an FPGA (field-programmable gate array), a PLD (programmable logic device), a PLA (programmable logic array), an RFID processor, smart chip, or any other device or arrangement of devices that are capable of implementing the actions of the processes of the technology disclosed.

Communications interface 2442 can include hardware and/or software that enables communication between quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400 and other systems controlling or enabling customer hardware and applications (hereinafter, a “host system” or “host”) such as for example, a robot or other guided mobile platform, an autonomous vehicle, a virtual reality-augmented reality wearable device (VR/AR headset) or the like (not shown in FIG. 24 for clarity sake). Cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108, as well as sensors such as IMU 2110, GPS receiver 2112 and WOU 2212, can be coupled to processor 2432 via a variety of communications interfaces and protocols implemented by hardware and software combinations. Thus, for example, positioning system 2400 can include one or more camera data ports and/or motion detector ports (not shown in FIG. 24 for clarity sake) to which the cameras and motion detectors can be connected (via conventional plugs and jacks), as well as hardware and/or software signal processors to modify data signals received from the cameras and motion detectors (e.g., to reduce noise or reformat data) prior to providing the signals as inputs to a fast accurate stable adaptive tracking (“FASAT”) process 2444 executing on processor 2432. In some implementations, quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400 can also transmit signals to the cameras and sensors, e.g., to activate or deactivate them, to control camera settings (frame rate, image quality, sensitivity, etc.), to control sensor settings (calibration, sensitivity levels, etc.), or the like. Such signals can be transmitted, e.g., in response to control signals from processor 2432, which may in turn be generated in response to user input or other detected events.

Instructions defining FASAT process 2444 are stored in memory 2434, and these instructions, when executed, perform analysis on image frames captured by the cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108, inertial data captured by the IMU 2110, geolocation data from the GPS receiver 2112 and the odometry data captured by the WOU 2212 connected to quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400. In one implementation, FASAT process 2444 includes various logical processes, such as a feature extractor 2452 that receives a raw image and determines a salient points' representation of objects in the image thereby representing the geometry understanding of the objects from a machine's perspective view. In some implementations, feature extractor 2452 analyzes images (e.g., image frames captured via cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108) to detect edges of an object therein and/or other information about the object's location. A sensor fusion tracking process 2454 uses feature extraction results, inertial data from the IMU 2110, geolocation data from the GPS receiver 2112 and odometry data from the WOU 2212 to generate pose accurately and rapidly. A smart interaction map 2456 enables using a known map of obstructions to localize the sensor. The map is built using mapping functionality of mapping process 2492, which is described in further detail herein below. A Re-localizer process 2458 recovers device positional awareness when the device has lost track of device position. A system diagnostic and response (SDAR) 2466 manages of current localizing state of the device and provide response strategy.

A mapping process 2492 generates a hybrid occupancy grid that maps the space and objects recognized by the feature extractor 2452. The hybrid occupancy grid includes (i) a point cloud representation of points in space located in the image frames and (ii) one or more x-y plane occupancy grids arranged at heights to intersect points on the extracted features.

In some implementations, other processing 2494 analyzes audio or ultrasonic signals (e.g., audio signals captured via sonar or audio sensors comprising non-tactile input 2482) to localize objects and obstructions by, for example, time distance of arrival, multilateration or the like (“Multilateration is a navigation technique based on the measurement of the difference in distance to two or more stations at known locations that broadcast signals at known times. See Wikipedia, at <http:slash-slashen.wikipediadotorg/w/index.php?title=Multilateration&oldid=523281858>, on Nov. 16, 2012, 06:07 UTC). Audio signals place the object on a known surface, and the strength and variation of the signals can be used to detect object's presence. If both audio and image information is simultaneously available, both types of information can be analyzed and reconciled to produce a more detailed and/or accurate path analysis.

In some implementations, other processing 2494 determines paths to track and predict device movements in space based upon the hybrid occupancy grid generated by mapping process 2492. One or more applications 2496 can be loaded into memory 2434 (or otherwise made available to processor 2432) to augment or customize functioning of the quadocular sensors thereby enabling the system 2400 to function as a platform. Successive camera images are analyzed at the pixel level to extract object movements and velocities. In some implementations, presentation interface 2478 includes a video feed integrator provides integration of live video feed from the cameras 2102, 2104, 2106 and 2108, and one or more virtual objects. Video feed integrator governs processing of video information from disparate types of cameras. For example, information received from pixels that provide quadochromatic imaging and from pixels that provide color imaging (e.g., RGB) can be separated by integrator and processed differently. Information from one type of sensor can be used to enhance, correct, and/or corroborate information from another type of sensor. Information from one type of sensor can be favored in some types of situational or environmental conditions (e.g., low light, fog, bright light, and so forth). The device can select between providing presentation output based upon one or the other types of image information, either automatically or by receiving a selection from the user.

Presentation interface 2478, audio presentation 2479, non-tactile input 2482, and communications interface 2442 can be used to facilitate user interaction via a quadocular sensor with quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400. These components can be of highly customized design, generally conventional design or combinations thereof as desired to provide any type of user interaction. In some implementations, results of analyzing captured images using inertial measuring unit 2110, GPS receiver 2112, wheel odometry unit 2212 and cameras 2102, 2104, 2108, 2110 and FASAT program 2444 can be interpreted as representing objects and obstacles in 3D space. For example, a robot equipped with quadocular-auxiliary sensor can perform path planning and/or obstacle avoidance across a surface that has been analyzed using FASAT program 2444, and the results of this analysis can be interpreted as an occupancy map by some other program executing on processor 2432 (e.g., a motion planner, localization and tracking process, or other application). Thus, by way of illustration, a robot might use sweeping of its cameras across a room in order to “map” a space currently imaged to a hybrid point grid that can be used by a host device such as a monitor, VR headset or the like via presentation interface 2478, to provide visual input of the area that the robot is “seeing”. Smart interaction map 2456 may use the representation of space built by mapping 2492 to plan a path for a robot or mobile platform through the space, e.g., to improve localization and tracking of the robot or platform through the space.

It will be appreciated that the quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400 is illustrative and that variations and modifications are possible. Quadocular-auxiliary positioning systems can be implemented in a variety of form factors, including “cloud” computing systems of servers and networks, desktop systems, laptop systems, tablets, smart phones or personal digital assistants, and so on. A particular implementation may include other functionality not described herein for clarity sake. In some implementations, one or more cameras and two or more microphones may be built into the quadocular-auxiliary system 2400 or may be supplied as separate components. Further, an image or audio analyzer can be implemented using only a subset of quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400 components (e.g., as a processor executing program code, an ASIC, or a fixed function digital signal processor, with suitable I/O interfaces to receive image data and output analysis results).

While quadocular-auxiliary positioning system 2400 is described herein with reference to particular blocks, it is to be understood that the blocks are defined for convenience of description and are not intended to imply a particular physical arrangement of component parts. Further, the blocks need not correspond to physically distinct components. To the extent that physically distinct components are used, connections between components (e.g., for data communication) can be wired and/or wireless as desired. Thus, for example, execution of feature extractor 2452 by processor 2432 can cause processor 2432 to operate inertial measurement unit 2110, GPS receiver 2112 and cameras 2102, 2104, 2106, 2108 to capture images and/or audio signals of an object traveling across and in contact with a surface to detect its entrance by analyzing the image and/or audio data.

Tracking

Tracking refers to capabilities rendered by system hardware and functional processes that enable a controlled device (robot, mobile platform, autonomous vehicles, or other hardware) to localize itself and have positional awareness continuously, e.g. the sensor system can determine where it is in the real world.

Architecture for Tracking System

FIG. 25 illustrates example architecture for a tracking system implementation. As shown in FIG. 25, components and information flow between components of an example fast, accurate, stable adaptive tracking (“FASAT”) process 2444 of FIG. 24 are illustrated by feature extractor (FE) 2502, sensor fusion based tracker (SFT) 2512, smart interaction with map (SIM) processor 2514, a system diagnostics and response (SDAR) processor 2503 and a Re-locator (RELOC) 2522. The data flow and operation of one example implementation of these components will next be described.

Feature Extraction

A feature extractor (FE) 2502 represents the geometric understanding of an environment from an autonomous mobile unit's perspective view. Feature extractor 2502 receives raw image information from Control Unit 1400 and provides a propagated pose of the autonomous mobile unit to a sensor fusion tracker (SFT) 2512. One implementation of a feature extractor 2502 performs a variety of actions including image preprocessing, feature detection, and feature descriptor preparation. Image processing tasks also include performing artifact removal and Gaussian blur and gamma correction on raw image data.

Feature Detection: Optical Flow

Optical flow gives 2D-2D correspondence between previous image and a current image. Feature extractor 2502 generates a hierarchy of levels; each level generation is aligned with optical flow needs, and therefore need only be computed once.

Processed images are stored in a multiple hierarchical patch and/or undistorted patch. In an example implementation, as levels in the hierarchy increase, the more blur exists in the image. At each level in the hierarchy, the size of the image is reduced to ¼ of the size of the image from which it is derived, e.g. the size of the image in the previous level. For example, if an image on the first (“zero level”) has a size 640×480, then the size of the corresponding image on the next higher level (“first level”) has a size 320×240, and a next corresponding image at the next higher level (“second level”) has a size 160×120. If the same feature point appears at more than one level, then that feature point is determined by the system to be a strong feature point. In the foregoing example, a scale factor of 2 is used. However, any scale factor can be selected, e.g., a scale factor of 1.6 provides the original 640×480 image with a next level image having a resolution of 400×300.

One feature extractor 2502 implementation employs optical flow methods to calculate the motion between two image frames, taken at times t and t+Δt at each voxel position. One such method, called a differential method, is based on local Taylor series approximations of the image signal, using partial derivatives with respect to the spatial and temporal coordinates. Accordingly, in an implementation, processing includes: (a) input: last image, current image, a list of detected feature locations from the last image; (b) output: a list of locations of the last image's detected features' in the current image; (c) assumption: brightness consistency, image changes by and only by motion; (d) action 1: predict the output locations by either just assuming there is no motion, so the current locations are the same as last frame's feature locations, OR use information retrieved from one or more auxiliary sensors to predict the locations; and (e) action 2: refine the pixel coordinate for each feature point by searching around the predicted location, matching patches, and using a matching score to determine the refined position. Accordingly, the technology disclosed can provide implementations with the ability to gain increased performance by using information from one or more auxiliary sensors to narrow the search and save time.

Feature Detection:

One implementation of feature extraction processor 2502 uses NEON-accelerated Shi-Tomasi feature detection with spatial binning in order to obtain features from regions to cover as much as possible for the full image. The feature extractor 2502 uses data from one or more auxiliary sensors and the pose information received from sensor fusion tracker 2512 in order to dynamically decide the regions to track and the parameters to use. Features are “interesting” parts of an image. A type of feature can be (A) two small Eigen values: feature is not interesting; (B) one small, one big value: feature is likely an edge; (C) two big values: feature is likely a corner; and (D) other type of features. Accordingly, in an implementation, processing includes: (a) action 1: calculate Eigen value of the intensity value of each pixel and its surrounding pixels, and determine (i) whether the feature is of interest; and (ii) for features of interest, a type of feature; and (b) action 2: refine by applying non-maximum suppression, applying spatial binning, applying heuristics or applying other types of refinement.

Feature Descriptor:

One implementation of feature extractor 2502 uses a SIMD-accelerated ORB descriptor to describe features. The description of a feature can be used for matching purposes and describe a feature's uniqueness. The ORB descriptor approach was selected for its relative rotational invariance and immunity to Gaussian image noise. One example of an ORB feature detector and binary descriptor can be found at “ORB feature detector and binary descriptor”, http:slash-slashscikit-imagedotorg/docs/dev/auto_examples/plot_orb.html (last accessed Aug. 17, 2016). For further information on ORB Descriptor, reference may be had to Ethan Rublee, et al., “ORB: an efficient alternative to SIFT or SURF”, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.

Combined Feature Detection and Descriptor:

In some implementations, the feature detection engine 1606 and the feature description engine 1610 can be combined, as demonstrated in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). A convolution neural network is a type of deep neural network that is widely used in object recognition tasks. A general CNN evaluation pipeline usually consists of the following layers: (i) the convolution layer uses different filters to extract different features from the input image with each filter containing a set of “learnable” parameters that will be derived after the training stage; (ii) the activation layer decides whether to activate the target neuron or not; (iii) the pooling layer reduces the spatial size of the representation to reduce the number of parameters and consequently the computation in the network; and (iv) the fully connected layer connects all neurons to all activations in the previous layer. CNNs have proven very useful in areas such as feature recognition and classification in images from visual sensors. CNNs have managed to identify faces, objects and traffic signs for autonomous robots and vehicles. CNNs are data centric and require heavy computation. In the last few years, increases in available storage and computation capabilities have enabled CNNs to achieve success in supervised perception tasks of key features in images from visual sensors. After training for days or even weeks on a large data set, a CNN can be capable of in real-time perception of key features in images. For example, CNNs have achieved top results with ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) dataset, which contains 1-2 million images in over 1000 categories.

Bag-of-Words

One implementation of feature extractor 2502 performs bag-of-words extraction, determining from one image a byte array, sparse histogram over vocabulary. Accordingly, in an implementation, Bag-of-words processing includes using a list of feature descriptors in one image to extract Bag-of-words feature for one image. For example, in an image having 400 features with 400 corresponding descriptors, and a bag-of-word feature with the size of 256 bits. The resulting Bag-of-words is a 256-bit array, and one image only needs/has one 256 bit array. Bag-of-words is useful in performing relocalization as described herein below in further detail. Bag-of-words can indicate among A, B, C images, an image D has a matching score individually D-A, D-B, D-C. Say for example that D-B has the highest score, and then the camera taking image D is closest to the camera pose used when taking image B, not A or C.

One implementation of feature extractor 2502 adaptively adjusts a threshold that is applied to a number of features needed in order for the system to keep track of a moving object. Such intelligent thresholds include a threshold that is adaptively adjusted based upon device movement, sensor readings, situational or environmental variables (e.g., low light, fog, bright light, and so forth) or combinations thereof. Once sufficient number of features (e.g., above the threshold) are identified, the system will continue to track an object. Otherwise, the system does not track the object. Feature extractor 2502 will adaptively adjust the threshold based on device movement and other sensor levels.

SFT: Generating Pose Information from Feature Extraction Results and Data from Auxiliary Sensors

Sensor fusion based tracker (SFT) 2512 determines how to smartly use feature extraction results and data from one or more auxiliary sensors (IMU 2110, WOU 2212, GPS receiver 2112) to generate pose accurately and rapidly. Sensor fusion based tracker 2512 performs initialization for the system state, feature extractor initial state, interaction with map state, and other states. Sensor fusion based tracker 2512 has logic to decide how to initialize the state including use how many images to skip, and any other initialization steps for specific hardware.

In an implementation, sensor fusion based tracker 2512 performs buffer management for the auxiliary sensors. Timestamps of the data from the auxiliary sensors are corrected and aligned. Additionally, data information from the auxiliary sensors that have not been processed yet is maintained in a buffer.

Generating Pose Information for a Quadocular-Auxiliary Sensor where an IMU and a GPS Receiver are Used as the Auxiliary Sensors

Propagation: In a quadocular-auxiliary sensor with two auxiliary sensors, an intermediate propagated pose is estimated using first propagated pose from image information together with second propagated pose from data from one auxiliary sensor. A third propagated pose is estimated from the second auxiliary sensor. A final pose is estimated from the intermediate pose and the third propagated pose. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize a variety of equivalent variations. In an implementation, an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor while a GPS receiver can be a secondary auxiliary sensor.

Implementations can employ extended Kalman filtering (EKF), to extrapolate the second propagated pose using inertial data from the multi-axis IMU. Propagation by the IMU can be performed in a number of ways: (i) the propagation happens right after an inertial measurement taken by the IMU arrives; or (ii) delayed propagation happens in a batch right after an image taken by the visual sensors arrives but before the update procedure described below is performed.

In some implementations, a motion sensor keeps a window of readings from the accelerometer of the IMU. The motion sensor computes the variance of the accelerations in the window of accelerator readings and determines whether the mobile unit is moving or static, based on the calculated variance. A variance greater than a predetermined threshold variance indicates the mobile unit is moving, and propagation is performed by using the EKF method. A variance smaller than a predetermined threshold variance indicates the mobile unit is static and propagation is performed by using the EKF method assuming zero velocity. The predetermined threshold variance can be estimated by various techniques as readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

The GPS receiver supplies the Control Unit the new geolocation of the autonomous mobile unit. The GPS receiver can provide position, velocity, and covariance information in North-east down (NED) format, or Doppler, pseudo ranges, and covariance information in Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) format. Propagation by the GPS receiver can be performed right after a new geolocation arrives from the satellite.

Update: In an implementation, an update process is performed using image information together with IMU and GPS receiver buffer samples. In a single observation implementation, based on the current image observation, the information needed for propagation, e.g., features, poses, map points, etc. is prepared. Then 2D-3D correspondence information for the optical flow tracked 2D features is obtained by directly using 2D-2D correspondences from optical flow tracking results. For the remaining 3D map points, smartly search over 3D with adaptive parameters by: (i) if the remaining number of points is small, e.g., below a threshold, perform a linear search, otherwise, (ii) if the remaining number of points is fairly big, e.g., above a threshold, perform a log(n) search with the use of a kd-tree or octree. Next, perform update, and generate pose for the current frame using only “good outstanding” points. Alternatively, perform the update twice: first only with high weights “good outstanding” points, then with all the map points. As used herein, the term “good outstanding” points denotes high quality points, e.g., those points having smaller reprojection error and/or being tracked many times in a good state, which can be selected by application of some heuristics.

FIG. 26 is a representative method 2600 of updating a position of an autonomous mobile unit that includes two or more cameras proving a 360-degrees view, a multi-axis inertial measuring unit, and a GPS receiver. Flowchart 2600 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 26. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this flowchart is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as system overview, tracking, mapping, robot implementation, autonomous vehicle, etc.

At step 2610, a location of an autonomous mobile unit is received. Let P_(l) be the initial pose of the autonomous mobile unit.

At step 2620, the autonomous mobile unit moves to a new location, and two new frames with 360-degrees views are captured by the two back-to-back pairs of cameras at the new location.

At step 2630, a 360-degrees depth map is determined from the two 360-degrees views.

At step 2640, a first propagated pose, P^(CAM) _(l+1), is estimated from the 360-degrees depth map.

At step 2650, information is received from the IMU and a second propagated pose, P^(IMU) _(l+1), is estimated from the inertial data from the IMU.

At step 2660, the first propagated pose P^(CAM) _(l+1) from the 360-degree image frame, and the second propagated pose P^(IMU) _(l+1) from the IMU is fused to generate an intermediate pose P^(i) _(l+1) with extended Kalman filtering (EKF).

At step 2670, a third propagated pose P^(GPS) _(l+1) is received from the GPS receiver.

At step 2680, a final pose P_(m) is estimated from the intermediate pose P^(i) _(l+1) and the third propagated pose P^(GPS) _(l+1) with extended Kalman filtering (EKF).

At step 2690, the final pose P_(m) is used to guide the autonomous mobile unit.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including one or more memory and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

In some implementations, the IMU may fail to provide inertial data, and the intermediate pose is determined using the first propagated pose from the images. In some implementations, one or more cameras in the multi-ocular system might fail, resulting in an image without a 360-degrees view. A first propagated pose is estimated from remaining operational cameras. In some implementations, all the cameras can fail in the multi-ocular system and data from the IMU is used to determine the intermediate propagated pose. In some implementations, the GPS receiver may fail to provide geolocation data, and the intermediate propagated pose can be used as the final pose.

Generating Pose Information for a Quadocular-Auxiliary Sensor where an IMU and a WOU are Used as the Auxiliary Sensors

Propagation: In a quadocular-auxiliary sensor with two auxiliary sensors, an intermediate propagated pose is estimated using first propagated pose from image information together with second propagated pose from data from one auxiliary sensor. A third propagated pose is estimated from the second auxiliary sensor. A final pose is estimated from the intermediate pose and the third propagated pose. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize a variety of equivalent variations. In an implementation, an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor while a wheel odometry unit can be a secondary auxiliary sensor.

Implementations can employ extended Kalman filtering (EKF), to extrapolate the second propagated pose using inertial data from the multi-axis IMU. Propagation by the IMU can be performed in a number of ways: (i) the propagation happens right after an inertial measurement taken by the IMU arrives; or (ii) delayed propagation happens in batch right after an image taken by the visual sensors arrives but before the update procedure described below is performed.

In some implementations, a motion sensor keeps a window of readings from the accelerometer of the IMU. The motion sensor computes the variance of the accelerations in the window of accelerator readings and determines whether the mobile unit is moving or static, based on the calculated variance. A variance greater than a predetermined threshold variance indicates the mobile unit is moving, and propagation is performed by using the EKF method. A variance smaller than a predetermined threshold variance indicates the mobile unit is static and propagation is performed by using the EKF method assuming zero velocity. The predetermined threshold variance can be estimated by various techniques as readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

The autonomous mobile unit has two wheels which are positioned parallel to each other and equidistant from the center of the mobile unit. The wheels can move forward or backward. The wheels are attached to a rotary encoder, which determines if either wheel has traveled one “unit” forward or reverse along the surface. This unit is the ratio of the circumference of the wheel to the resolution of the encoder. The distance traveled by the mobile unit can be computed from the number of units traveled and the circumference of its wheels. In the case where one wheel is allowed to rotate, while the other remains stationary, the magnitude of the change of position of the center of the robot can be determined using the law of sines. If the left wheel were to move forward one unit while the right wheel remained stationary, then the right wheel acts as a pivot, and the left wheel traces a circular arc in the clockwise direction. If the right wheel were to move forward one unit while the left wheel remained stationary, then the left wheel acts as a pivot, and the right wheel traces a circular arc in the anti-clockwise direction.

Propagation by the WOU can be performed in a number of ways: (i) the propagation happens right after an odometry measurement taken by the WOU arrives; or (ii) delayed propagation happens in a batch right after an image taken by the visual sensors arrives but before the update procedure described below is performed.

Update: In an implementation, an update process is performed using image information together with IMU and WOU receiver buffer samples. In a single observation implementation, based on the current image observation, the information needed for propagation, e.g., features, poses, map points, etc. is prepared. Then 2D-3D correspondence information for the optical flow tracked 2D features is obtained by directly using 2D-2D correspondences from optical flow tracking results. For the remaining 3D map points, smartly search over 3D with adaptive parameters by: (i) if the remaining number of points is small, e.g., below a threshold, perform a linear search, otherwise, (ii) if the remaining number of points is fairly big, e.g., above a threshold, perform a log(n) search with the use of a kd-tree or octree. Next, perform update, and generate pose for the current frame using only “good outstanding” points. Alternatively, perform the update twice: first only with high weights “good outstanding” points, then with all the map points. As used herein, the term “good outstanding” points denotes high quality points, e.g., those points having smaller reprojection error and/or being tracked many times in a good state, which can be selected by application of some heuristics.

FIG. 27 is a representative method 2700 of updating a position of an autonomous mobile unit that includes two or more cameras proving a 360-degrees view, a multi-axis inertial measuring unit, and a wheel odometry unit. Flowchart 2700 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 27. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this flowchart is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as system overview, tracking, mapping, robot implementation, autonomous vehicle, etc.

At step 2710, a location of an autonomous mobile unit is received. Let P_(i) be the initial pose of the autonomous mobile unit.

At step 2720, the autonomous mobile unit moves to a new location, and two new frames with 360-degrees views are captured by the two back-to-back pairs of cameras at the new location.

At step 2730, a 360-degrees depth map is determined from the two 360-degrees views.

At step 2740, a first propagated pose, P^(CAM) _(l+1), is estimated from the 360-degrees depth map.

At step 2750, information is received from the IMU and a second propagated pose, P^(IMU) _(l+1), is estimated from the inertial data from the IMU.

At step 2760, the first propagated pose P^(CAM) _(l+1) from the 360-degrees image frame and the second propagated pose P^(IMU) _(l+1) from the IMU is fused to generate an intermediate pose 1 ³¹ _(l+1) with extended Kalman filtering (EKF).

At step 2770, a third propagated pose P^(WOU) _(l+1) is received from the wheel odometry unit.

At step 2780, a final pose P_(m) is estimated the intermediate pose P^(i) _(l+1) and the third propagated pose P^(WOU) _(l+1) with extended Kalman filtering (EKF).

At step 2790, the final pose P_(m) is used to guide the autonomous mobile unit.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including one or more memory systems and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

In some implementations, the IMU may fail to provide inertial data, and the intermediate pose is determined using the first propagated pose from the images. In some implementations, one or more cameras in the multi-ocular system might fail, resulting in an image without a 360-degrees view. A first propagated pose is estimated from remaining operational cameras. In some implementations, all the cameras can fail in the multi-ocular system and data from the IMU is used to determine the intermediate propagated pose. In some implementations, the wheel odometry unit may fail to provide new location data, and the intermediate propagated pose can be used as the final pose.

Generating Pose Information for a Quadocular-Auxiliary Sensor where an IMU, a WOU and a GPS Receiver are Used as the Auxiliary Sensors

Propagation: In a quadocular-auxiliary sensor with three auxiliary sensors, a first intermediate propagated pose is estimated using first propagated pose from image information together with second propagated pose from data from the first auxiliary sensor. A second intermediate propagated pose is estimated using first intermediate pose with third propagated pose from data from the second auxiliary sensor. A fourth propagated pose is estimated from the third auxiliary sensor. A final pose is estimated from the second intermediate pose and the fourth propagated pose. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize a variety of equivalent variations. In an implementation, an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor, a wheel odometry unit can be a secondary auxiliary sensor, and a GPS receiver can be the third auxiliary sensor.

Implementations can employ extended Kalman filtering (EKF), to extrapolate the second propagated pose using inertial data from the multi-axis IMU. Propagation by the IMU can be performed in a number of ways: (i) the propagation happens right after an inertial measurement taken by the IMU arrives; or (ii) delayed propagation happens in a batch right after an image taken by the visual sensors arrives but before the update procedure described below is performed. In some implementations, a motion sensor keeps a window of readings from the accelerometer of the IMU. The motion sensor computes the variance of the accelerations in the window of accelerator readings and determines whether the mobile unit is moving or static, based on the calculated variance. A variance greater than a predetermined threshold variance indicates the mobile unit is moving, and propagation is performed by using the EKF method. A variance smaller than a predetermined threshold variance indicates the mobile unit is static and propagation is performed by using the EKF method assuming zero velocity. The predetermined threshold variance can be estimated by various techniques as readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

The autonomous mobile unit has two wheels which are positioned parallel to each other and equidistant from the center of the mobile unit. The wheels can move forward or backward. The wheels are attached to a rotary encoder, which determines if either wheel has traveled one “unit” forward or reverse along the surface. This unit is the ratio of the circumference of the wheel to the resolution of the encoder. The distance traveled by the mobile unit can be computed from the number of units traveled and the circumference of its wheels. In the case where one wheel is allowed to rotate, while the other remains stationary, the magnitude of the change of position of the center of the robot can be determined using the law of sines. If the left wheel were to move forward one unit while the right wheel remained stationary, then the right wheel acts as a pivot, and the left wheel traces a circular arc in the clockwise direction. If the right wheel were to move forward one unit while the left wheel remained stationary, then the left wheel acts as a pivot, and the right wheel traces a circular arc in the anti-clockwise direction.

Propagation by the WOU can be performed in a number of ways: (i) the propagation happens right after an odometry measurement taken by the WOU arrives; or (ii) delayed propagation happens in a batch right after an image taken by the visual sensors arrives but before the update procedure described below is performed.

The GPS receiver supplies the Control Unit the new geolocation of the autonomous mobile unit. The GPS receiver can provide position, velocity, and covariance information in North-east down (NED) format, or Doppler, pseudo ranges, and covariance information in Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) format. Propagation by the GPS receiver can be performed right after a new geolocation arrives from the satellite.

Update: In an implementation, an update process is performed using image information together with IMU, WOU and GPS receiver buffer samples. In a single observation implementation, based on the current image observation, the information needed for propagation, e.g., features, poses, map points, etc. is prepared. Then 2D-3D correspondence information for the optical flow tracked 2D features is obtained by directly using 2D-2D correspondences from optical flow tracking results. For the remaining 3D map points, smartly search over 3D with adaptive parameters by: (i) if the remaining number of points is small, e.g., below a threshold, perform a linear search, otherwise, (ii) if the remaining number of points is fairly big, e.g., above a threshold, perform a log(n) search with the use of a kd-tree or octree. Next, perform update, and generate pose for the current frame using only “good outstanding” points. Alternatively, perform the update twice: first only with high weights “good outstanding” points, then with all the map points. As used herein, the term “good outstanding” points denotes high quality points, e.g., those points having smaller reprojection error and/or being tracked many times in a good state, which can be selected by application of some heuristics.

FIG. 28 is a representative method 2800 of updating a position of an autonomous mobile unit that includes two or more cameras proving a 360-degrees view, a multi-axis inertial measuring unit, a wheel odometry unit, and a GPS receiver. Flowchart 2800 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 28. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this flowchart is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as system overview, tracking, mapping, robot implementation, autonomous vehicle, etc.

At step 2805, a location of an autonomous mobile unit is received. Let P_(l) be the initial pose of the autonomous mobile unit.

At step 2810, the autonomous mobile unit moves to a new location, and two new frames with 360-degrees views are captured by the two back-to-back pairs of cameras at the new location.

At step 2815, a 360-degrees depth map is determined from the two 360-degrees views.

At step 2820, a first propagated pose, P^(CAM) _(l+1), is estimated from the 360-degrees depth map.

At step 2825, information is received from the IMU, and a second propagated pose, P^(IMU) _(l+1), is estimated from the inertial data from the IMU.

At step 2830, the first propagated pose P^(CAM) _(l+1) from the 360-degrees image frame and the second propagated pose P^(IMU) _(l+1) from the IMU is fused to generate a first intermediate pose P^(i) _(l+1) with extended Kalman filtering (EKF).

At step 2835, a third propagated pose P^(WOU) _(l+1) is received from the wheel odometry unit.

At step 2840, the first intermediate pose P^(i) _(l+1) and the third propagated pose P^(WOU) _(l+1) from the WOU is fused to generate a second intermediate pose P^(ii) _(l+1) with extended Kalman filtering (EKF).

At step 2845, a fourth propagated pose P^(GPS) _(l+1) is received from the GPS receiver.

At step 2850, a final pose P_(m) is estimated the second intermediate pose P^(ii) _(l+1) and the fourth propagated pose P^(GPS) _(l+1) with extended Kalman filtering (EKF).

At step 2855, the final pose P_(m) is used to guide the autonomous mobile unit.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including memory and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

In some implementations, the IMU may fail to provide inertial data, and the first intermediate pose is determined using the first propagated pose from the images. In some implementations, one or more cameras in the multi-ocular system might fail, resulting in an image without a 360-degrees view. A first propagated pose is estimated from remaining operational cameras. In some implementations, all the cameras can fail in the multi-ocular system and data from the IMU is used to determine the first intermediate propagated pose. In some implementations, the wheel odometry unit may fail to provide new location data, and the first intermediate propagated pose can be used as the second intermediate pose. In some implementations, the GPS receiver may fail to provide new location data and the second intermediate propagated pose can be used as the final pose.

SIM: Smart Map Interaction and Localize

Smart interaction with map (SIM) processor 2514 enables smart interaction by a device being guided (i.e., receiving positional awareness information from the quadocular-auxiliary sensor system) with a known map in order to localize itself. Accordingly, one implementation of a smart interaction map processor 2514 processing includes: (a) Perform a query of the map based on a need and a current status. Some query components included by specific implementations are map points (xyz, uncertainty, average reprojection error, etc.), keyrigs' poses, 2D-3D constraint information, and occupancy grid (one layer or multiple layer). As used herein, the term keyrig denotes a set of image data received. In some implementations, the sets of image data include feature points and pose information. The pose information includes a location of the mobile device and view of the camera that captured the image data. The sets of image data are referred to collectively as keyrigs; (b) If the map as a whole is not big, e.g., meets a particular threshold size, return the entire map; (c) Otherwise, if the map is big, e.g., meets or exceeds a particular threshold size and covers large areas, e.g., spatial area meets or exceeds a particular threshold, smartly grab a local region of map based on the device's current position; (d) If some area of the map is known to have bad quality, don't use it; and (e) Adaptively down-sample map based on system performance according to an adaptive parameter. For example: (i) if the 3D feature-based tracking process has been accurate, e.g., below a threshold number of errors or invocations of relocalization processing to relocalize a device that has lost its place, then reduce the sample size to conserve resources, otherwise, (ii) if the device is getting lost frequently, e.g., meets or exceeds a threshold, then increase the sample size to provide better tracking.

SDAR: Manage Localization State and Response Strategy

System diagnostics and response (SDAR) processor 2503 performs system level management of current localizing state of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor and provides response strategy. In one implementation, the system diagnostics and response processor 2503 monitors tracked map points and corresponding reprojection error, monitors the longevity of untracked map points, and suggests actions to mapping module, monitors device speed/acceleration/jitter/drift, monitors map “activity” (i.e., is it updated regularly?), performs new added map contribute enough to the overall mapping (i.e., so it's not doing useless hovering?), monitors keyrig topology (i.e., stretch enough or too much?), suggests when and where the device should add keyrig, and monitors feature extractor pipeline

Relocalize a Lost Device

Re-locator 2522 recovers a device that has lost track of its positional from this state. Once re-locator 2522 returns the lost device back on track, the device can resume normal interacting with smart interaction map processor 2514, and/or can contribute to map building, using the techniques described herein below.

Mapping

In implementations, geometric information obtained by a 3D feature-based tracking process is represented using a descriptive point cloud representation. The descriptive point cloud is a set of sparse 3D points, where each point encodes a 3D geometric location, an uncertainty of the geometric location, and a set of 2D location plus appearance-based descriptors, each observed by a keyrig. A keyrig contains (i) a Timestamp where the images in the keyrig is captured; (ii) a pose (i.e. the transformation from the quadocular-auxiliary sensor's coordinate to the map coordinate at the current time) and its uncertainty; and (iii) a sequence of readings from the auxiliary sensors starting from a first temporal point before the timestamp to a second temporal point after the timestamp. Some implementations further include a flag to specify whether the quadocular-auxiliary sensor is moving or static. This flag can be set from information obtained from the IMU readings.

As a GPS receiver does not work inside a closed environment such as a warehouse, home, etc. Therefore, an implementation of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor is used, where an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor while a wheel odometry unit can be a secondary auxiliary sensor. In one implementation, data from the visual sensors can be integrated with information from the inertial measurement unit and wheel odometry unit for robustness in difficult lighting or motion situations, and for overall global consistency. Examples of robot applications in a closed environment that benefit from employing positional awareness techniques such as described herein include caregiver and service robots (homes, offices, hospitals, etc.), a robot vacuuming/mopping/cleaning the floor (homes, offices, hospitals, etc.), a robot being commanded to carry objects around the environment (in warehouses, factories, etc.) or a robot butler that follows a person around in homes.

Unlike a closed environment, a GPS receiver can be used as an auxiliary sensor in an open environment such as highways, residential or urban driving environments, etc. Therefore, a quadocular-auxiliary sensor can be used where an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor while a GPS can be a secondary auxiliary sensor. In one implementation, a quadocular-auxiliary sensor is used where an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor, a wheel odometry unit can be the second auxiliary sensor, and a GPS can be the third auxiliary sensor. In one implementation, data from the visual sensors can be integrated with information from the inertial measurement unit (IMU) and GPS devices for robustness in difficult lighting or motion situations, and for overall global consistency. Examples of robot applications in an open environment that benefit from employing positional awareness techniques such as described herein include autonomous vehicles, delivery robots and autonomous public transportation

Hybrid Representation

Implementations represent the spatial information perceived by a 3D feature-based mapping system and optionally an active ranging sensor (placed in parallel to the ground plane) using a hybrid point grid representation. One example implementation of a hybrid point grid representation combines a descriptive point cloud and a multi-layer 2D occupancy grid map.

The occupancy grid map can be a plane oriented substantially perpendicular to the direction of gravity. Each layer has a specific height. (The layer on the floor is typically 0 according to one convention.). FIG. 29 illustrates an example of an occupancy grid map in one implementation. Occupancy grid 2900 of FIG. 29 indicates a single layer, such as a floor layer 2902, mapped by an implementation of the quadocular-auxiliary sensor. The white portions of occupancy grid 2900 indicate empty space—in other words space that has been determined by the quadocular-auxiliary sensor to be unoccupied. For example, when the quadocular-auxiliary sensor is able to look through the room door and window to note space beyond the walls of the room that is unoccupied, these regions are marked accordingly in occupancy grid 2900. Portions in solid black indicate space that is occupied by an object or obstacle. The gray portions indicate space that the quadocular-auxiliary sensor has not yet determined whether these spaces are occupied or empty.

A 3 degrees of freedom transform that relates the descriptive point cloud coordinates to the gravity-based coordinates. For example, if the normal vector of the ground plane (i.e., gravity) is known, first rotate the point cloud so that the z-axis of the point cloud is parallel to the gravity, using a 3-by-3 rotation matrix R=R_pitch*R_roll. Then, (optionally) translate the point by [0, 0. T_z] so that the z=0 is on the ground plane. Note, a normal 3-by-3 rotation matrix has 3 degrees of freedom (R_yaw,*R_pitch*R_roll), however in this case are only 2 degrees. A normal 3-by-1 translation has 3 degrees of freedom ([t_x, t_y, t_z]), but here there is only 1 degree.

Creating a Point Cloud for Features Representation

Implementations incrementally create a descriptive point cloud from the results of 3D feature-based tracking by adding keyrigs according to a criterion, such as in a following example. Result of 3D feature based tracking is received in sets of image data that include feature points and pose information. The pose information includes a location of the mobile device and view of the camera that captured the image data. These sets are referred to collectively as keyrigs. Accordingly, an implementation builds a descriptive point cloud by selecting keyrigs using one or more criteria such as for example the following: (a) The first image frame is selected as a keyrig, and the device coordinate frame at that timestamp become the coordinates of the descriptive point cloud. This establishes a frame of reference; (b) The latest keyrig's timestamp is less than current timestamp for a time threshold (typically 2 sec); (c) The distance between the current tracked pose to the latest keyrig's location is larger than a threshold (e.g., x meters); (d) The distance between the current tracked pose to the latest keyrig's pointing angle is larger than a threshold (e.g., y degrees); (e) The current image contains a percentage of features not included in the current descriptive point cloud; and (f) The device is currently static. This information can be obtained from information from the auxiliary sensors.

If the keyrig being considered for addition contains features not included in the current descriptive point cloud, triangulate the new features from images captured from the device at this timestamp to obtain the points in the device's coordinate frame. Add the new points to the map by transforming the points from the device's coordinate frame to the map's coordinate frame. Noteworthy is that some implementations include one or more of (i) triangulating new feature points across images from a current/same keyrig (e.g. between left and right cameras), (ii) triangulating new feature points across images from two different keyrigs, wherein the two different keyrigs are not necessarily in sequence (e.g. left camera from keyrig 1 to left camera from keyrig 10), and (iii) triangulating new feature points from images in keyrigs chosen based upon a criterion (e.g., smart selection of an “optimal” keyrig). The transform is determined using feature-based tracking or other methods.

Refining a Point Cloud

In one implementation, a descriptive point cloud from the 3D feature-based tracking is refined by obtaining an “optimal” (i) pose of each keyrig and (ii) 3D locations of all the points that minimizes weighted sum of re-projection errors of all the points projected to their observed keyrigs, and (iii) optionally, the accelerometer readings from keyrigs with static flag must be [0, 0, 1] to force the z-axis of the map coordinate to be closer to gravity direction, while fulfilling the following constraint (if applicable): the pose moves along a plane (if the device is mounted on a vehicle with planar motion).

In one implementation, refining a descriptive point cloud from the 3D feature-based tracking is performed with limited computation resources by the following processing: (a) Randomly sample N number of keyrigs from the entire set of keyrigs; (b) Accurately refine the pose of the sample set of keyrigs and the 3D points observed in these keyrigs by minimizing the weighted sum of the (i) re-projection errors of all the points projected to their observed keyrigs, and (ii) optionally, the accelerometer readings from keyrigs with static flag must be [0, 0, 1] to force the z-axis of the map coordinate to be closer to gravity direction, while fulfilling the following constraints (if applicable): the pose moves along a plane (if the device is mounted on a vehicle with planar motion); (c) Repeat the sampling and minimizing except fixing the 3D points and the poses that have already been optimized from the previous iteration; and (d) Iterate until a desired percentage of keyrigs and points are optimized.

Creating a Hybrid Point Grid

In one implementation, an initial hybrid point grid representation is created from a descriptive point cloud using the following processing: (a) Transform the descriptive point cloud from its original coordinate frame to a coordinate frame where z-axis is along the gravity direction. This transformation has 2 degrees of freedom (in rotation); (b) Initialize a 2D occupancy grid map for layers that cover the x-y points in the descriptive point cloud; and (c) Each layer of the occupancy grid map is filled in by points (in the descriptive point cloud) within a height range using ray tracing process.

Refining a Hybrid Point Grid

In one implementation, the hybrid point grid representation is refined using information from active sensors using the following processing: (a) Obtain the pose, (transform from the device coordinate to the map's coordinate) where each active sensor's signal is captured, from the trajectory of the device in the map's coordinate frame; and (b) Use ray tracing process to update the 2D occupancy grid map.

In one implementation, the refining hybrid point grid representation from an updated descriptive point cloud is performed using the following processing: (a) Transform the descriptive point cloud's coordinate frame to the gravity-based coordinate frame; and (b) Use ray tracing process to determine which cells to update from each point in the descriptive point cloud.

Estimating a Trajectory for a Guided Device

In one implementation, an offline trajectory of a device between two consecutive keyrigs (i.e. from keyrig k to keyrig k+1) in a descriptive point cloud is estimated using the following processing: (a) Initialize the image frame that creates keyrig k to be at its pose stored in the descriptive point cloud; (b) Use the “3D feature-based tracking process” as described herein under section heading “Tracking” to track the image frames between the two keyrigs. Each image frame has 6-degrees of freedom pose, and a set of correspondences of 3D map point to 2D image observed location; (c) Force the image frame that creates keyrig k+1 to be at its pose stored in the descriptive point cloud; (d) Refine all the poses by minimizing the sum of reprojection errors of all observed locations. The reprojection error is the error between a reprojected point in the camera coordinate frame and the original point. Estimating a Transform for a descriptive point cloud and Gravity Based Frame

In one implementation, the 2 degrees of freedom coordinate transform between the descriptive point cloud to a coordinate where z-axis is along the gravity direction is estimated using any of the following methods: (a) Measuring the gravity direction from the auxiliary sensors while it is static, and find a rotation matrix that transforms the gravity direction to [0, 0, 1]; (b) Obtain at least 3 points on the ground-plane from the descriptive point cloud to estimate the ground-plane's normal in the original coordinate. Find a rotation matrix that transforms the ground-plane's normal to [0, 0, 1] or [0, 0, −1]; and (c) Offline calibrate the relation between the quadocular-auxiliary sensors to the ground by placing a known planar pattern on the ground to determine the rotation matrix.

In some implementations, an autonomous mobile unit may require deeper understanding of the environment to behave correctly; for example, at intersections, knowing the location of pedestrians and bicyclists can allow an autonomous vehicle to make more sophisticated precedence decisions. Therefore, the 3-D features can be further classified by the shapes of the features and by their motion. By only considering objects near the road and those that were previously recognized as pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars, autonomous vehicles are frequently able to classify everything in every scan while maintaining real time operation. Assuming the autonomous vehicle drives too fast or too close to the vehicle in front, it has to slow down noticeably but without excessive rush.

Warehouse Robot Implementation

FIG. 30 illustrates an example model of a warehouse robot 3002 guidance using image and auxiliary sensor information techniques described herein. As a GPS receiver does not work inside closed environment such as a warehouse, a quadocular-auxiliary sensor 3004 is used where an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor while a wheel odometry unit can be a secondary auxiliary sensor.

Examples of other robot applications that benefit from employing positional awareness techniques such as described herein include caregiver and service robots (traveling on a ground plane), a robot vacuuming/mopping/cleaning the floor, a robot being commanded to carry objects around the environment, a telepresence robot moving around a remote environment automatically, a robot butler that follows a person around, etc.

In each of the scenarios listed above, the warehouse robot utilizes the technology disclosed herein in order to track its own location and to recognize the objects that it encounters. Also, since the warehouse robot performs many complex tasks, each with real-time constraints, it is beneficial that the sensing be done rapidly to accelerate the perception pipeline. In implementations, this can be achieved by offloading some computation from the main processor to the quadocular-auxiliary sensor. In addition, since it is a mobile robot, which carries limited storage capacity battery, energy consumption is a design point. In implementations, some computational tasks are off loaded from the main processor to the quadocular-auxiliary sensor to reduce power consumption, thereby enabling implementations to achieve overall energy efficiency. Cost is an issue in mobile robots, since lowering the cost of the robot makes the robot affordable to more customers. Hence cost can be another factor for sensor and guidance system design.

In FIG. 30, the walls, corners and loading dock 3008 of warehouse room 3000 as well as the travels of warehouse robot 3002 on the floor of room 3000 are reflected in the hybrid point grid, comprised of descriptive point cloud 3045 and occupancy grid 3055, developed by the quadocular-auxiliary sensor using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section. The occupancy grid 3055 is a part of the hybrid point grid that is a layer of the multi-layer 2D occupancy grid map described in the Mapping section. To build a map of an unknown (newly exposed) environment, the quadocular-auxiliary sensor equipped robot 3002 keeps track of its pose using the technology described herein above in the Tracking section while incrementally building an initial descriptive point cloud using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section. Then, the robot 3002 builds an occupancy grid 3055 to complete the hybrid point grid from the initial descriptive point cloud 3045 using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section.

Obtain Real Time Image and Information from Auxiliary Sensors

In order to track its location, the robot senses its own movement through quadocular-auxiliary sensor. The quadocular-auxiliary sensor generates reliable data from auxiliary sensors so that the tracking and mapping pipeline that follows can accurately infer the robot's location. FIG. 30 illustrates an example warehouse robot guidance application in which one implementation can be embodied. As illustrated by FIG. 30, robot 3002 implements quadocular-auxiliary sensor to self-localize within a room 3000. The robot 3002 in FIG. 30 has two cameras in the front (solid circles) and two cameras at the back (dotted circles) of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor 3004 in order to capture image frames of the surrounding environment of room 3000. The images are processed according to the technology disclosed herein above under the Sensor Visual Data Generation and Processing section as follows:

Detect and Describe Features in Captured Images

Quadocular-auxiliary sensor determines feature points for the walls, loading dock 3008, shelves 3006, trolley 3010, and random boxes 3012, 3014 scattered around the room 3000 from the information in the captured image frames. In some implementations, Shi-Tomasi feature detection is employed to determine the feature points 3006, 3008, 3010, 3012, 3014 from the image frames. Features are assigned descriptors using ORB feature description. Optical flow techniques are used to determine 2D correspondences in the images, enabling matching together features in different images.

Map Feature Descriptors to a Hybrid Point Grid

The quadocular-auxiliary sensor equipped warehouse robot 3002 can build a descriptive point cloud 3045 of the obstacles in room 3000 enabling the robot 3002 to circumnavigate obstacles and self-localize within room 3000. Quadocular-auxiliary sensor creates, updates, and refines descriptive point cloud 3045 using feature descriptors determined for room features indicated by points 3006, 3008, 3010, 3012, and 3014 using the technology disclosed herein above under the Mapping sections. As depicted schematically in FIG. 30, descriptive point cloud 3045 includes coordinates and feature descriptors corresponding to the feature points 3006, 3008, 3010, 3012, 3014 of room 3000. Quadocular-auxiliary sensor prepares an occupancy map 3055 by reprojecting feature points 3006, 3008, 3010, 3012, 3014 onto a 2D layer corresponding to the floor of the room 3000. In some implementations, second and possibly greater occupancy maps are created at differing heights of the warehouse robot 3002, enabling the robot 3002 to navigate about the room 3000 without bumping its head into door soffits, or other obstacles above the floor.

Now with renewed reference to FIG. 29, which illustrates an example of an occupancy grid 2900, the white portions indicate empty space—in other words space that has been determined by quadocular-auxiliary sensor to be unoccupied. Portions in solid black indicate space that is occupied by an object or obstacle. The gray portions indicate space that the quadocular-auxiliary sensor of warehouse robot 3002 has not yet determined whether these spaces are occupied or empty.

The descriptive point cloud 3045 and occupancy grid 3055 comprise a hybrid point grid that enables the warehouse robot 3002 to plan paths of travel through room 3000, using the occupancy grid 3055 and self-localize relative to features in the room 3000 using the descriptive point cloud 3045.

Using the Occupancy Grid and Path Planning

When the robot is activated in a previously mapped environment, the robot uses the technology described herein above in the Tracking sections to self-locate within the descriptive point cloud 3045. The descriptive point cloud 3045 and occupancy grid 3055 comprise a hybrid point grid representation that is key to enabling robot action (i.e. moving on the floor) using passive sensors because the robot uses the occupancy grid 3055 in order to plan a trajectory 3056 from its current location to the loading dock in the map using the technology described herein above in the Mapping sections. A person or entity can also command the robot to go to a specific point in the occupancy grid 3055. While traveling, the robot uses the descriptive point cloud 3045 to localize itself within the map as described herein above in the Tracking sections. The robot can update the map using the techniques described herein above in the Mapping sections. Further, some implementations equipped with active sensors (e.g. sonar, LIDAR) can update the map using information from these sensors as well.

Autonomous Vehicle Implementation

FIG. 31 illustrates an example model of an autonomous vehicle 3102 guidance using image and auxiliary sensor information techniques described herein. A quadocular-auxiliary sensor 3104 is used where an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor while a GPS receiver can be a secondary auxiliary sensor. In another implementation, a quadocular-auxiliary sensor is used where an IMU can be the first auxiliary sensor, a wheel odometry unit can be the second auxiliary sensor, and a GPS can be the third auxiliary sensor.

Examples of other robot applications that benefit from employing positional awareness techniques such as described herein include delivery robots and autonomous public transportations.

In each of the scenarios listed above, the autonomous vehicle utilizes the technology disclosed herein in order to track its own location and to recognize the objects that it encounters. Also, since the autonomous vehicle performs many complex tasks, each with real-time constraints, it is beneficial that the sensing be done rapidly to accelerate the perception pipeline. In implementations, this can be achieved by offloading some computation from the main processor to the quadocular-auxiliary sensor. In addition, since autonomous vehicle carries limited storage capacity battery, energy consumption is a design point. In implementations, some computational tasks are off loaded from the main processor to the quadocular-auxiliary sensor to reduce power consumption, thereby enabling implementations to achieve overall energy efficiency.

In FIG. 31, objects in an urban driving environment 3100 as well as the travels of the autonomous vehicle 3102 on the road of the urban driving environment 3100 are reflected in the hybrid point grid, comprised of descriptive point cloud 3145 and occupancy grid 3155, developed by the quadocular-auxiliary sensor using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section. The occupancy grid 3155 is a part of the hybrid point grid that is a layer of the multi-layer 2D occupancy grid map described in the Mapping section. To build a map of an unknown (newly exposed) environment, the quadocular-auxiliary sensor equipped autonomous vehicle 3102 keeps track of its pose using the technology described herein above in the Tracking section while incrementally building an initial descriptive point cloud using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section. Then, the autonomous 3102 builds an occupancy grid 3155 to complete the hybrid point grid from the initial descriptive point cloud 3145 using the technology described herein above in the Mapping section.

Obtain Real Time Image and Information from Auxiliary Sensors

In order to track its location, the autonomous vehicle senses its own movement through quadocular-auxiliary sensor. The quadocular-auxiliary sensor generates reliable data from auxiliary sensors so that the tracking and mapping pipeline that follows can accurately infer the autonomous vehicle's location. FIG. 31 illustrates an example autonomous vehicle guidance application in which one implementation can be embodied. As illustrated by FIG. 31, autonomous vehicle 3102 implements quadocular-auxiliary 3104 sensor to self-localize within an urban driving environment room 3100. The autonomous vehicle 3102 in FIG. 31 has two cameras in the front (not shown in FIG. 31) and at the back (shown in FIG. 31) of a quadocular-auxiliary sensor 3104 in order to capture image frames of the surrounding urban driving environment 3100. The images are processed according to the technology disclosed herein above under the Sensor Visual Data Generation and Processing section as follows:

Detect and Describe Features in Captured Images

Quadocular-auxiliary sensor determines feature points lane dividers 3106, roadside curbs 3108, zebra crossing 3110, a pedestrian crossing the road 3112, a pedestrian walking on the sidewalk 3114, a mailbox 3116, traffic signal posts 3118, 3120, 3122, 3124, a car in front of the autonomous vehicle 3126, and a car behind the autonomous vehicle 3128 from the information in the captured image frames. In some implementations, a convolution neural network is employed to determine the feature points 3106, 3108, 3110, 3112, 3114, 3116, 3118, 3120, 3122, 3124, 3126, and 3128 from the image frames and obtain feature description. Optical flow techniques are used to determine 2D correspondences in the images, enabling matching together features in different images.

Map Feature descriptors to a Hybrid Point Grid

The quadocular-auxiliary sensor equipped autonomous vehicle 3102 can build a descriptive point cloud 3145 of the obstacles in the urban driving environment 3100 enabling the autonomous vehicle 3102 to circumnavigate obstacles and self-localize within the driving environment 3100. Quadocular-auxiliary sensor creates, updates, and refines descriptive point cloud 3145 using feature descriptors determined for room features indicated by points 3106, 3108, 3110, 3112, 3114, 3116, 3118, 3120, 3122, 3124, 3126, and 3128 using the technology disclosed herein above under the Mapping sections. As depicted schematically in FIG. 31, descriptive point cloud 3145 includes coordinates and feature descriptors corresponding to the feature points 3106, 3108, 3110, 3112, 3114, 3116, 3118, 3120, 3122, 3124, 3126, and 3128 of urban driving environment 3100. Quadocular-auxiliary sensor prepares an occupancy map 3155 by reprojecting feature points 3106, 3108, 3110, 3112, 3114, 3116, 3118, 3120, 3122, 3124, 3126, and 3128 onto a 2D layer corresponding to the floor of the urban driving environment 3100. In some implementations, second and possibly greater occupancy maps are created at differing heights of the autonomous vehicle 3102, enabling the autonomous vehicle 3102 to navigate about the urban driving environment 3100 without bumping without hitting a pedestrian, or following traffic signals.

The descriptive point cloud 3145 and occupancy grid 3155 comprise a hybrid point grid that enables the autonomous vehicle 3102 to plan paths of travel through the driving environment 3100, using the occupancy grid 3155 and self-localize relative to features in the driving environment 3100 using the descriptive point cloud 3145.

Using the Occupancy Grid and Path Planning

When the autonomous vehicle is activated in a previously mapped environment, the autonomous vehicle uses the technology described herein above in the Tracking sections to self-locate within the descriptive point cloud 3145. The descriptive point cloud 3145 and occupancy grid 3155 comprise a hybrid point grid representation that is key to enabling autonomous vehicle action (i.e. moving forward along the road) using passive sensors because the autonomous vehicle uses the occupancy grid 3155 in order to plan a trajectory 3156 from its current location to its final destination in the map using the technology described herein above in the Mapping sections. A person or entity can also command the autonomous vehicle to go to a specific point in the occupancy grid 3155. While traveling, the autonomous vehicle uses the descriptive point cloud 3145 to localize itself within the map as described herein above in the Tracking sections. The robot can update the map using the techniques described herein above in the Mapping sections. Further, some implementations equipped with active sensors (e.g. sonar, LIDAR) can update the map using information from these sensors as well.

Processes

FIG. 32 is a representative method 3200 of guiding an autonomous mobile unit using information from a camera with distance calculation and from the auxiliary sensors. Flowchart 3200 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 32. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this flowchart is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as system overview, tracking, mapping, robot implementation, VR/AR implementation, etc.

FIG. 32 includes process 3200 that begins at action 3210, where image sets from a visual sensor are buffered. In some implementations, image sets are received from a visual sensor. The visual sensor is disposed on a mobile platform, such as a robot, autonomous vehicle, or other autonomous or guided mobile platform.

Process 3200 continues at action 3220 where measurements from auxiliary sensors are buffered. The auxiliary sensors can be collocated with the visual sensor or can be disposed at an offset thereto.

At action 3230, the sets of image data are received at a Control Unit.

At action 3240, the sets of sensor data from the auxiliary sensors are received at the Control Unit.

At action 3250, the sets of sensor data from the auxiliary sensors are processed to estimate localization data. Inertial data from the multi-axis IMU are timestamped, corrected for bias, scaled using a stored scale factor the corrected inertial data, and then corrected for misalignment in the IMU to form localization data. Odometry data from the WOU are timestamped, adjusted for slippage, and then scaled using a stored scale factor the corrected odometry to form localization data. Geolocation data from the GPS receiver are timestamped to form localization data.

At action 3250, imaging undistortion is performed on the sets of image data.

At action 3260, the localization data and the undistorted sets of image data are provided across a communications interface to a host controlling a mobile platform.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including memory and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

FIG. 33 is a representative method 3300 of using a hybrid point grid to guide an autonomous mobile unit that includes more than one camera with distance calculation and one or more auxiliary sensors. Flowchart 3300 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 33. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this flowchart is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as system overview, tracking, mapping, robot implementation, VR/AR implementation, etc.

FIG. 33 includes process 3300 that begins at action 3310, where sets of image data are received. In some implementations, the sets of image data include feature points and pose information. The pose information includes a location of the autonomous mobile unit and view of the camera that captured the image data. The sets of image data are referred to collectively as keyrigs.

Process 3300 continues at action 3320 where the keyrigs are reviewed to select keyrig content to include in a point cloud of features, based upon comparisons of keyrig content with content of other selected keyrigs subject to one or more intelligent thresholds. As used herein, intelligent thresholds includes a threshold that is adaptively adjusted based upon device movement, sensor readings, situational or environmental variables (e.g., low light, fog, bright light, and so forth) or combinations thereof.

At action 3330, for selected keyrigs, (a) new feature points in the keyrig are triangulated using feature points of keyrigs previously added to the point cloud of features to obtain feature points in a coordinate system of the device, and (b) coordinates of the feature points in the point cloud of features are aligned to a coordinate system having a z-axis aligned with gravity.

At action 3340, a multilayered hybrid point grid is created from the feature points selected for the point cloud of features, using at least one layer of a multilayered 2D occupancy grid by the following:

At action 3350, a 2D occupancy grid corresponding to one selected from a plurality of x-y layers covering the feature points in the point cloud of features is initialized.

At action 3360, at least one layer of the occupancy grid is populated with points from the point cloud of features within a height range using ray tracing from an observed location of a point in the keyrig aligned to a corresponding point in the occupancy grid and a location of a corresponding point reprojected on the layer of the occupancy grid.

At action 3370, cells along a ray between the aligned observed point and the corresponding point reprojected on the layer are found and the found cells are marked as empty.

At action 3380, responsive to receiving a command to travel to a location, the occupancy grid is used to plan a path of travel to a location commanded and contemporaneously the descriptive point cloud is used while traveling the planned path to avoid colliding with obstructions.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including memory and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

Conclusion and Additional Implementations

We describe a system and various implementations for guiding a mobile device using information from one or more camera and one or more auxiliary sensors, e.g. multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU), wheel odometry unit (WOU), depth sensor, etc.

Some particular implementations and features are described in the following discussion.

In one implementation, described is an apparatus that guides an autonomous mobile unit using information from one or more cameras with one or more auxiliary sensors. The apparatus can include a multi-ocular controller which comprise at least four interfaces to couple with at least four cameras, each camera providing a field of view of 170 degrees to 1510 degrees and the cameras are configured into back-to-back pairs, where each pair of cameras provides at least a 360-degrees view. The multi-ocular controller further includes a synchronization signal generator that creates a synchronization signal to provide to each of the cameras enabling the cameras to acquire images in time frames relative to one another, a timestamp generator that creates time stamps for images captured by the cameras, thereby maintaining a set of synchronized images in which images captured are tagged with a current timestamp. The apparatus further includes a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) that receives image information in frames of at least 3 Megabytes (3 MB) from a camera at a rate of at least 30 frames per second (FPS) via an Input/output (I/O) interface and extract features from the image information; a feature buffer that includes at least a first bank and a second bank to contain features extracted from the image information; a buffer controller that triggers a notification to consumer processes that features are available in at least one of the first bank and the second bank of the feature buffer; the capability of locking the first bank from further receiving features from the DSP while features from the first bank are being consumed by the consumer processes, once the first bank is filled; and one or more processing cores that executes the consumer processes, including a mapping process that builds a map as a guided vehicle explores and an update process that compares features to the map, and that provides output of one or more of the mapping process and the update process to a guided vehicle.

In some implementations, the multi-ocular controller can be implemented on a field programmable gate array (FPGA).

In some implementations, the field of view is between 180 degrees to 200 degrees.

In some implementations, the field of view is 190 degrees.

In some implementations, the images from the cameras are not aggregated and processed individually.

In some implementations, the images from the cameras are aggregated which enables multiple images to be processed as an aggregated image.

In some implementations, the images from the cameras are rectified.

In some implementations, a first pair of cameras is disposed approximately horizontally with respect to a second pair of cameras.

In some implementations, a first pair of cameras is disposed approximately vertically with respect to a second pair of cameras.

In some implementations, the apparatus further includes an interface to couple with an inertial measurement unit (IMU).

In some implementations, the apparatus further includes a global real-time clock, and the timestamp generator synchronizes with the global real-time clock when creating time stamps.

In some implementations, the apparatus synchronizes IMU data with the global real-time clock.

In some implementations, the apparatus further includes an interface to couple with an odometry sensor.

Also disclosed is an implementation that includes a method of guiding an autonomous mobile unit that includes a visual sensor having at least four operational camera providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform and an IMU and a GPS receiver as auxiliary sensors. The method includes receiving images from at least 4 cameras; fusing a first propagated pose from the images with a second propagated pose from an IMU to provide an intermediate propagated pose to an EKF propagator; receiving at the EKF propagator a third propagated pose from a GPS receiver; preparing an updated propagated pose from the intermediate and third propagated poses; and providing the updated propagated pose to guide a mobile platform. In some implementations, the method is implemented in a system which includes a processor and a computer readable storage unit storing instructions. In some implementations, the method is implemented in a system which includes a non-transitory computer readable medium to store instructions.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of the IMU; being responsive to the failure condition of the IMU detected; and determining the intermediate pose using the first propagated pose from the images.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of at least one of the at least 4 cameras. When a single camera fails resulting in no 360-degrees view, image information from the remaining cameras are used to determine the first propagated pose. When all cameras fail resulting in no image information, data from the IMU is used to determine the intermediate propagated pose.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of the GPS receiver; being responsive to the failure condition; and providing the intermediate propagated pose as the updated propagated pose.

In some implementations, the GPS receiver provides position, velocity and covariance information of the autonomous mobile unit in North-east down (NED) format and has the capability of converting the intermediate propagated pose into NED format and the propagated poses are reported in North-east down (NED) format.

In some implementations, the GPS receiver provides doppler, pseudo ranges and covariance information in Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) format and has the capability of converting the intermediate propagated pose into ECEF format and reported the propagated poses in Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) format.

In some implementations, the GPS receiver provides NED position and covariance information in North-east down (NED) format and has the capability of converting the intermediate propagated pose into NED format and reporting the propagated poses in North-east down (NED) format.

In some implementations, the IMU propagates a position every 5 ms, and the IMU error is accumulated over time. In every 100 ms, updated information is received from the GPS receiver which is used to correct the IMU error.

Also disclosed is an implementation that includes a method of guiding an autonomous mobile unit that includes a visual sensor having at least four operational camera providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform and an IMU and a WOU as auxiliary sensors. The method includes receiving images receiving images from at least 4 cameras providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; fusing a first propagated pose from the images with a second propagated pose from an IMU to provide an intermediate propagated pose to an EKF propagator; receiving at the EKF propagator a third propagated pose from an odometry sensor coupled with at least one wheel of the autonomous mobile platform; preparing an updated propagated pose from the intermediate and third propagated poses; and providing the updated propagated pose to guide a mobile platform. In some implementations, the method is implemented in a system which includes a processor and a computer readable storage unit storing instructions. In some implementations, the method is implemented in a system which includes a non-transitory computer readable medium to store instructions.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of the IMU; being responsive to the failure condition of the IMU detected; and determining the intermediate pose using the first propagated pose from the images.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of at least one of the at least 4 cameras. When a single camera fails resulting in no 360-degrees view, image information from the remaining cameras are used to determine the first propagated pose. When all cameras fail resulting in no image information, data from the IMU is used to determine the intermediate propagated pose.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of the odometry sensor; being responsive to the failure condition; and providing the intermediate propagated pose as the updated propagated pose.

Also disclosed is an implementation that includes a method of guiding an autonomous mobile unit that includes a visual sensor having at least four operational camera providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform and an IMU and a GPS receiver as auxiliary sensors. The method includes receiving images from at least 4 cameras providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; fusing a first propagated pose from the images with a second propagated pose from an IMU to provide a first intermediate propagated pose to an EKF propagator; fusing the first intermediate propagated pose from the images and the IMU with a third propagated pose from an odometry sensor coupled to at least one wheel, to provide a second intermediate propagated pose to an EKF propagator; receiving at the EKF propagator a fourth propagated pose from a GPS receiver; preparing an updated propagated pose from the second intermediate and fourth propagated poses; and providing the updated propagated pose to guide a mobile platform. In some implementations, the method is implemented in a system which includes a processor and a computer readable storage unit storing instructions. In some implementations, the method is implemented in a system which includes a non-transitory computer readable medium to store instructions.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of the IMU; being responsive to the failure condition of the IMU detected; and determining the first intermediate pose using the first propagated pose from the images.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of at least one of the at least 4 cameras. When a single camera fails resulting in no 360-degrees view, image information from the remaining cameras are used to determine the first propagated pose. When all cameras fail resulting in no image information, data from the IMU is used to determine the first intermediate propagated pose.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of the odometry sensor; being responsive to the failure condition; and providing the first intermediate propagated pose as the second intermediate propagated pose.

In some implementations, the method further includes the capability of detecting a failure condition of the GPS receiver; being responsive to the failure condition; and providing the second intermediate propagated pose as the updated propagated pose.

In some implementations where an IMU is used as an auxiliary sensor, a motion sensor keeps a window of readings from the accelerometer of the IMU. The motion sensor computes the variance of the accelerations in the window of accelerator readings and determines whether the mobile unit is moving or static, based on the calculated variance. A variance greater than a predetermined threshold variance indicates the mobile unit is moving, and propagation is performed by using the EKF method. A variance smaller than a predetermined threshold variance indicates the mobile unit is static and propagation is performed by using the EKF method assuming zero velocity. The predetermined threshold variance can be estimated by various techniques as readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

In some implementations where an IMU is used as an auxiliary sensor, the image update from the camera in the mobile unit with one operational camera can fail due to a blurred image captured due to fast motion of the mobile unit, poor illumination in the surrounding environment, camera's viewpoint is being blocked by an object, etc. Also, there can be a significant number of IMU propagations between two successful image update. After a certain number of consecutive image update failures, propagation is performed by using the EKF method on the gyroscope reading of the IMU. Propagation based on the on the gyroscope reading of the IMU predicts a propagated pose by assuming the mobile unit is rotating in place.

In some implementations, the tracking can be entirely mapless by keeping a window of image frames during the tracking process. A 2D-2D feature matching correspondence is maintained by two consecutive image frames in the window of image frames. At any time, a small local map can be reconstructed by triangulating the 2D features.

In some implementations, 2D features matching from two consecutive image frames can be performed by combining corner feature detection and optical flow. Given the set of 2D features detected in the first image at time t−1, the location of each 2D feature in the second image at time t is estimated by using optical flow. If the number of 2D features detected through optical flow in the second image is less than the number of 2D features in the second image. The 2D corner features can be detected by using Eigen values of neighboring pixels or by binning the second image spatially. 2D features can be matched temporally between a first image taken at time t−1 and a second image taken at time t from the same camera by matching the 2D features by optical flow or establishing links between 2D features from consecutive time frames with similar description and location proximity (i.e., within 20 pixels).

In some implementations, if there is more than one operational camera, 2D features can be matched spatially through links. A link is set of 2D features from different cameras with different spatial viewpoints. 2D features can be matched spatially for each camera to existing links by collecting the set of 2D features that are not matched to any existing links (i.e. features that are left out from temporal matching), collecting the set of links that are available to be connected to features from this camera, and calculating the similarity between each available feature and each available link. The similarity between a feature and a link is the best similarity score between the descriptor of this feature and the descriptors of the features in the link. If the similarity score is more than a threshold, match the 2D feature to the link. If the similarity score is less than a threshold, check the similarity score of the 2D feature with another available link. New links can be created by collecting the set of features that are not matched to any existing links (i.e. features that are left out from both temporal matching and spatial matching to existing links), collecting the set of links that are available to be connected to features from the current camera (a link is available when it does not contain a feature from this camera at the current time), and calculating the similarity between each feature and each available link. If the similarity score is more than a threshold, add the available 2D feature to the available link. New links can be created across one or more camera by collecting a set of features that are not matched to any existing links, and calculating the similarity between a pair of 2D features from different.

The terms and expressions employed herein are used as terms and expressions of description and not of limitation, and there is no intention, in the use of such terms and expressions, of excluding any equivalents of the features shown and described or portions thereof. In addition, having described certain implementations of the technology disclosed, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that other implementations incorporating the concepts disclosed herein can be used without departing from the spirit and scope of the technology disclosed. Accordingly, the described implementations are to be considered in all respects as only illustrative and not restrictive. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A system including: a mobile platform controllable by a host, the mobile platform having disposed thereon: a visual sensor comprising at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; a multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) capable of providing measurement of at least acceleration; a global positioning system (GPS) receiver; and a visual inertial control unit, including a processor and a coupled memory storing instructions for guiding the mobile platform, which instructions when executed by the processor perform: receiving images from the at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; determining a 360-degrees depth map from the frames; estimating a propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map; fusing a first propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map with a second propagated pose from the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to provide an intermediate propagated pose to an extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator; receiving at the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator a third propagated pose from the global positioning system (GPS) receiver; preparing an updated propagated pose from the intermediate and third propagated poses; and using the updated propagated pose to guide the mobile platform.
 2. The system of claim 1, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU); and responsive to the failure condition of the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) detected, determining the intermediate propagated pose using the first propagated pose from the images.
 3. The system of claim 1, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of at least one of the at least 4 cameras; whenever a single camera fails resulting in no 360-degrees view, responsively using image information from remaining cameras to determine the first propagated pose; and whenever all cameras fail resulting in no image information, responsively using data from the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to determine the intermediate propagated pose.
 4. The system of claim 1, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of the global positioning system (GPS) receiver; and responsive to the failure condition, providing the intermediate propagated pose as the updated propagated pose.
 5. The system of claim 1, wherein the global positioning system (GPS) receiver provides position, velocity and covariance information in North-east down (NED) format and further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: converting the intermediate propagated pose into North-east down (NED) format; and wherein the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator produces propagated poses in North-east down (NED) format.
 6. The system of claim 1, wherein the global positioning system (GPS) receiver provides doppler, pseudo ranges and covariance information in Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) format and further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: converting the intermediate propagated pose into Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) format; and wherein the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator produces propagated poses in Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) format.
 7. The system of claim 1, wherein the global positioning system (GPS) receiver provides position and covariance information in North-east down (NED) format and further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: converting the intermediate propagated pose into North-east down (NED) format; and wherein the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator produces propagated poses in North-east down (NED) format.
 8. The system of claim 1, wherein the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) propagates a position every 5 ms, and wherein an error is accumulated over time; and every 100 ms, an updated information is received from the global positioning system (GPS) receiver; and wherein the updated information is used to correct the error.
 9. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions for guiding a mobile platform, which instructions, when executed by a processor perform: receiving images from at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; determining a 360-degrees depth map from the frames; estimating a propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map; fusing a first propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map with a second propagated pose from a multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to provide an intermediate propagated pose to an extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator; receiving at the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator a third propagated pose from a global positioning system (GPS) receiver; preparing an updated propagated pose from the intermediate and third propagated poses; and using the updated propagated pose to guide the mobile platform.
 10. A system including: a mobile platform controllable by a host, the mobile platform having disposed thereon: a visual sensor comprising at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; a multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) capable of providing measurement of at least acceleration; an odometry sensor coupled with at least one wheel of the mobile platform; and a visual inertial control unit, including a processor and a coupled memory storing instructions for guiding the mobile platform, which instructions when executed by the processor perform: receiving images from the at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; determining a 360-degrees depth map from the frames; estimating a propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map; fusing a first propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map with a second propagated pose from the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to provide an intermediate propagated pose to an extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator; receiving at the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator a third propagated pose from the odometry sensor coupled with at least one wheel of the mobile platform; preparing an updated propagated pose from the intermediate and third propagated poses; and using the updated propagated pose to guide the mobile platform.
 11. The system of claim 10, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU); and responsive to the failure condition of the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) detected, determining the intermediate propagated pose using the first propagated pose from the images.
 12. The system of claim 10, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of at least one of the at least 4 cameras; whenever a single camera fails resulting in no 360-degrees view, responsively using image information from remaining cameras to determine the first propagated pose; and whenever all cameras fail resulting in no image information, responsively using data from the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to determine the intermediate propagated pose.
 13. The system of claim 10, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of the odometry sensor; and responsive to the failure condition, providing the intermediate propagated pose as the updated propagated pose.
 14. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions for guiding a mobile platform, which instructions, when executed by a processor perform: receiving images from at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; determining a 360-degrees depth map from the frames; estimating a propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map; fusing a first propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map with a second propagated pose from a multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to provide an intermediate propagated pose to an extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator; receiving at the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator a third propagated pose from an odometry sensor coupled with at least one wheel of the mobile platform; preparing an updated propagated pose from the intermediate and third propagated poses; and using the updated propagated pose to guide the mobile platform.
 15. A system including: a mobile platform controllable by a host, the mobile platform having disposed thereon: a visual sensor comprising at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; a multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) capable of providing measurement of at least acceleration; a global positioning system (GPS) receiver; an odometry sensor coupled to at least one wheel; and a visual inertial control unit, including a processor and a coupled memory storing instructions for guiding the mobile platform, which instructions when executed by the processor perform: receiving images from the at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; determining a 360-degrees depth map from the frames; estimating a propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map; fusing a first propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map with a second propagated pose from the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to provide a first intermediate propagated pose to an extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator; fusing the first intermediate propagated pose from the images and the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) with a third propagated pose from an odometry sensor coupled to at least one wheel, to provide a second intermediate propagated pose to the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator; receiving at the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator a fourth propagated pose from the global positioning system (GPS) receiver; preparing an updated propagated pose from the second intermediate and fourth propagated poses; and using the updated propagated pose to guide the mobile platform.
 16. The system of claim 15, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU); and responsive to the failure condition of the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) detected, determining the first intermediate propagated pose using the first propagated pose from the images.
 17. The system of claim 15, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of at least one of the at least 4 cameras; whenever a single camera fails resulting in no 360-degrees view, responsively using image information from remaining cameras to determine the first propagated pose; and whenever all cameras fail resulting in no image information, responsively using data from the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to determine the first intermediate propagated pose.
 18. The system of claim 15, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of the odometry sensor; and responsive to the failure condition, providing the first intermediate propagated pose as the second intermediate propagated pose.
 19. The system of claim 15, further comprising instructions that when executed by the processor perform: detecting a failure condition of the global positioning system (GPS) receiver; and responsive to the failure condition, providing the second intermediate propagated pose as the updated propagated pose.
 20. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions for guiding a mobile platform, which instructions, when executed by a processor perform: receiving images from at least 4 cameras providing at least two frames, each frame providing a 360-degrees view about a centerline of the mobile platform; determining a 360-degrees depth map from the frames; estimating a propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map; fusing a first propagated pose from the 360-degrees depth map with a second propagated pose from an multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) to provide a first intermediate propagated pose to an extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator; fusing the first intermediate propagated pose from the images and the multi-axis inertial measuring unit (IMU) with a third propagated pose from an odometry sensor coupled to at least one wheel, to provide a second intermediate propagated pose to the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator; receiving at the extended Kalman filter (EKF) propagator a fourth propagated pose from a global positioning system (GPS) receiver; preparing an updated propagated pose from the second intermediate and fourth propagated poses; and using the updated propagated pose to guide the mobile platform. 